Turkish Delights
by Sentomegami
Summary: AU. Death came at his will but against the Lifestream's. Faced with a choice between ignorance and bliss or suffering and power, Rufus Shinra chooses suffering. RufusTseng, RenoRude, ZackSephirothAeris
1. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

_He's falling and firing that gun. _

_The gun he's held to his forehead so many times, wishing desperately that he had the kind of courage such an act entailed. The gun that's slaughtered so many in his short life, so many that he could dye a hundred of his father's suits red. Above him, back on the ledge, he can see the wispy, silver hair and the insane, cat-like eyes staring down at him in fury, voice cursing him as he makes his descent. He's ready, though, ready, and he closes his eyes…_

_And then he abruptly opens them again because he can no longer feel the rush of air on his face or hear the sound of his gun. There had been no crash, no shattering of bones, no pain, so he could not have landed.He opens his eyes and all he can see is green, a glowing, ethereal green that makes his insides seize up and his heart pound as he realizes just where he is, or, more exactly, just where he isn't. With a cry that echoes through the strange, familiar light, he clutches his gun to his chest, desperate suddenly to hear the sound of its fire when set off too close to his ear. When the gun does not fire, even after he reloads it, and he only hears the hollow click of the mechanics,he spins about desperately only to see green light for miles and miles and miles before—_

"_What are you doing here?"_

_He freezes. The voice echoes around him, much like his scream did earlier. For a moment, nothing happens, but then he feels a prod, notices a slight shift in some points in the green light, a shimmer here, a ripple there._

"_It's not your time," says the voice, or voices; he can't tell with the echoes. "You shouldn't be here…"_

_He's never been a cowardly man, but he finds it takes much control for him to speak. "What do you mean?" he shouts, noticing, out of the corner of one eye, that his hand - the hand previously blackened by the plague, the Geostigma - seems to be glowing, seems to be on fire but with no pain. "What's going on?"_

_Again there are ripples and shimmers, and, he hears of the first time, whispers like thousands of people conversing at the same time. He thinks that they (whoever they are) sound agitated, worried. His heart pounds in his chest. There are so many voices._

"_Do you know what happened?"_

_This time the voice does not echo and seems to be just one, a kind but firm voice. He turns a bit to his left, looks directly at a shimmer several feet away with dissecting eyes._

"_No," he answers, "I don't know. I should be dead. Butthere should have been pain if I'd died; I should have felt my body smash open before everything shut down."_

_Shimmer-thing flickers as so hundreds of others. "We do not doubt your honesty," it says, its' murmuring once more sounding through the light. "This is our mistake… We havemiscalculated and now our mistake must be corrected." _

_More murmurs, some louder, some softer. Ironically, it makes him think of the board room, filled with all of his father's people, all of whom had planned to harness this green light, to bend it towards human will._

_A new voice, older, wiser, harsher, speaks. "We have a proposal for you."_

_It sounds ominous, but what other choice does he have? He is a reasonable man; he will listen."What is this… proposal?" The word tastes like poison in his mouth._

"_We must send you back. It is not your time to join us." A pause. "But we cannot send you back to the time where you are directly affected by the great schism in our plan. Either we will allow you to keep your memories but send back to the time of our choosing, or we will wipe your memories of everything that has thus occurred but return to the moment before your infection. It is your choice."_

"_In other words," he says, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice, "either I become your repair tool or I remain a blind puppet."_

_There is a long silence, no murmurs, not echoes. He fingers his gun, and he thinks of the past, all his years and his life, all the terrible and the few wonderful things. He considers and weighs before he decides. Well, what has he got to loose? He knows he can't go back; they would have sent him back already if that were so. And so much as gone wrong, yet there's so much he would rather die than forget._

"_I want..." He pauses, looks at the clean skin on his hand, the mark ofthe plague vanished, cleaned. "I want to keep my memories."_

_Another pause, then a million shimmers and ripples, a canopy of voices all murmuring, all whispering. The shimmer that spoke alone to him first stands out for a brief moment, and he almost imagines that it is smiling._

"_Very well."_

_And then he's falling again but now through absolute darkness._

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

Prologue

_I Never Promised You a Rose Garden_

--

Pain.

It was everywhere. He withered, writhed, but he seemed to be strapped down with something very strong. The pain was burning and relentless, and he screamed until his throat was raw and dry, until his voice was hoarse and he could scream no more. For hours, he felt like he was going to die; for hours, he could think of nothing other than the pain, the absolute agony.

But, slowly, so horribly slowly, the pain faded away and he could think again. He was exhausted, yes, but he couldn't sleep, not with all the thoughts running through his head, not with all the strange smells and blurry sights around him.

_Where am I?_ He thought as his breathing finally steadied, but that thought was immediately followed by another, more disturbing one as he remembered the green light and the fall from the roof. _When am I?_

Footsteps were the first sound other than his own laboured breathes that he registered, one set of shuffling thumps and another of heavy scuffs. They were nearing him, and he struggled to focus his sight, struggled to see more than the watery blurs that made up his vision. He couldtaste blood on his lips.His limps were still securely fastened to the surface he lay upon.

"Can he hear us?" asked a gruff, crude voice that sent a jolt of fear and horror through his exhausted body.

Shuffling thumps, a cold cloth pressed over his eyes, wiping away the watery film so that he could see. "No. He'll be delirious for another half-an-hour or so, Mister President."

Red, like his name, but hated; it was all he can see now that his vision was no longer blocked. It was the red of his father's signature suit, bronze buttons in buttonholes stretched because of a corpulent belly. A pudgy hand pressed against some machinery next to his head.

"You better have fixed him up good by tonight, Hojo. I can't have my son worrying his dear Mother so much she won't let me screw her after dinner."

"You know," said Hojo, in a strange tone, "you almost killed the kid. If I shoot him up again so soon, it'll speed up the process of healing, but there's going to be consequences."

Rufus Shinra, for the first time in a long time, felt true fear and despair as he listened to his father speak again in the very same voice he heard in his nightmares.

"I don't care." Flat, no emotion, yet it still tore atRufus's insides. "Just do it. He's useless this way."

A needle slid into his right arm, into the vein,filled with the familiar glowing green. The pain started again, but he had no more energy or breath to scream.And, for a long time,he thought no more.

--

_End Prologue_


	2. Paradise Lost

Soft scents of lavender and rosewater, so very familiar and comforting, engulfed his senses, wrapping around the lingering traces of pain. Rufus moaned and inhaled desperately, heard his breath wheeze through his gradually fading sore throat. The smell got closer and he felt a cool, soft hand upon his cheek that graced his skin with perfectly shaped, smooth acrylic nails. Against his own will, Rufus felt a small smile creeping onto his lips; oh, he had had dreams like this. A bit of dreaded hope bubbled in his chest, and he mustered up all his strength to pry open his eyes.

For a moment, he could only see blurs—calm, cool blurs that eventually took shape as he blinked absently to clear his vision. The bubble of hope exploded into wondrous fireworks, and his heart thudded with joy as he stared up at the delicate-boned, pale, and blue-eyed figure seated next to him. He didn't register that his face had broken into huge, delirious smile; all he could think of, all he could see and feel, was –

"_Mother_."

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

1

_Paradise Lost_

--

When Rufus Shinra was twelve-years-old, his mother had gone missing. It had been the first of many major events in Rufus's short life, the first thing that really brought him the real world from his secluded bubble of a lifestyle. Rufus had been the last one to see his mother before she disappeared, and he had been questioned endlessly and paraded by his father through the media as a tool to show the loving nature of the Shinra family. At the time, Rufus had not protested because he had been distraught and uncomprehending; all he had known was that his mother, the pale, weak angel of a woman, was no longer around, no longer there.

But now, with his mother looking down at him with her small, fragile smile, Rufus knew. His memory of what had—well, _would_ if he was guessing correctly—occur was as clear as day—a definite, extended flashbulb memory—, and, as he remembered what was to come, he felt the joy and hope deflating and becoming despair.

His mother seemed to notice his smile fading because she drew back, retracting her hand and bring it to her lap. "Rufus?" she asks, her voice smooth, kind, and soft; "Would you like me to leave? I know you don't like me to see you like this…"

Rufus shook his head, ignoring the stars that went off in his vision, and he grasped onto his mother's white dress with small hands. "No, Mother," he whispered, "please stay."

She reached over and pet his hair, Rufus unconsciously arching to the gentle touch. "Is there something wrong, Ruf'?"

A thousand thoughts ran through his mind. He couldn't very well tell her that her husband was planning to have her removed. Even Rufus wasn't completely sure of that; it was just something he had always suspected, an explanation for his mother's disappearance that had never been solved. But he wasn't about to…

"No…" his voice sounded hoarse but also sounded so young, so different from years of living after puberty, and a question surfaced and escaped his lips: "What's the date?"

She blinked before smiling again, reaching back out to stroke his cheek. "The eighteenth of September, dear. You're twelve today, did you forget?" she paused, a look of distant pain passing over her face. "I'm sorry, Ruf'. But you were acting up again, and you know that your father isn't a forgiving man."

He stared up at her, stared at the vacant smile on her face, and ignored the absentminded stroking of his skin and hair. It was as if something very cold had dropped deep into his stomach; it was as if something precious to him had suddenly slipped from his grasp and shattered.

"Mother…" Rufus breathed as the tears began to make tracks in her perfect make-up. "Please, Mother, don't cry. Don't cry because of me."

With some effort and a hiss of pain, he sat up and grasped her thin hands in his own, pressing it to his beating heart. It was something that he had seen Tseng do to Elena during the Weapon Crisis, when they hadn't known that Rufus had been in the room. Copying Tseng, he used one hand to keep her hands on his chest and used his other's thumb to gently brush away a tear from her right eye.

She stared at him, utterly shocked, and he smiled, hoping that he was embodying the kindness he'd seen Tseng give Elena.

"Don't worry, Mother. It'll be okay."

She gave him a smile, and, for a few moments, he let himself believe that it would always be this way.

--

Just because he had received the orders with his normal poker face didn't mean that he was happy about it. Oh, no. In reality, Tseng was pretty hopping enraged. It wasn't enough that he was branded the certified "traitor" in his family and was currently one of the lower Turks on the totem pole. It wasn't enough that he was always having to kiss up to everyone above him, always having to stick his neck out extra on missions just to keep his job.

"I'm going to be a babysitter," he grumbled across the table to his fellow Turk, Rude, "for the junior Shinra."

Rude swirled his coffee. "It could be worse," he said in a gruff but companionable tone; "You could be asked to mate with one of Hojo's experiments."

Despite himself, Tseng felt an eyebrow shoot up and he paused in his silent contemplation of the slowly deepening colour of his tea. Genuine interest was perked now, and, as a Turk, he couldn't just let an information gathering opportunity escape his grasp.

"Does that actually happen?"

"…Yes."

He thought he caught a hint of red in Rude's cheeks. The bald man took a deep gulp of his black coffee and wouldn't talk anymore, clearly declaring that this uncomfortable conversation was over and should never be brought up again.

--

The room was dark, the curtains drawn over the night smog of Midgar. At his bedside, a no-nonsense white clock blinked ten minutes past two in the morning, but he was far from ready to sleep. Indeed, Rufus had not been still since his mother had left him several hours ago, instead choosing to pace back and forth between his bed and his desk that had papers splattered with blood from what Rufus assumed had been his beating earlier that day.

Ten years. Ten years of work, of struggling, of pain were now only existent in his head. It hit him harder than he had expected it to. The clock, spinning backwards, warped into a past that he knew the outcome of. All to be repeated, all the horrific and wonderful things… No, he could not think about it like that. It was too overwhelming.

Rufus sighed and pressed index and middle finger against his throbbing left temple. Around him, the room of his youth once more seemed large when only a few days ago, when wheeled into it in that damned wheelchair, he had been shocked at how small it really was. The simple emotions, clearly defined, that had trumped his senses in the beginning had long since begun to blend again, and they swirled in his blood as he struggled to understand.

"Why?" he asked the air, for what felt like the umpteenth time that night, refraining from screaming. "Why _me_?"

What did the Lifestream want from him? Rufus's headache intensified as he turned to circle the perimeter of the room again. If it—they, whatever they were—wanted him to fix the future he had lived, they should have chosen someone else or goddamn told him what needed to be done. Rufus rubbed his wrists out of habit, noticing absently that the Geostigma no longer marred his body, and glanced at his young form in the mirror, wincing at the light green glow in his eyes and the way his blue pajamas hung on his form.

For a moment, he paused before walking up the mirror, gazing into the blue, green-lined eyes of his reflected image. A young face stared at him, a little less angular but otherwise unchanged, and arms and legs a bit lanky showed the beginning of a growth spurt.

"I," he said to the image in a clear, emotionless voice that sounds so strange coming from a child's mouth, "have lost my mind."

It's a logical explanation, worthy of Hojo in its bluntness and Rude in its honesty. Rufus let out a deep sigh as he turned this new perspective over and over within his mind. He couldn't very well go telling anyone what was going to happen to them; they'd think him crazy just as he was suspecting and his father would finally find the perfect excuse to lock him up. Nor could he try to change things outside of his control such as the War in Wutai that was currently raging or the development of AVALANCHE.

Rufus groaned and massaged his growing headache. He needed a drink. A good, long pull from the neck of a vodka bottle washed down by a glass of aged wine, preferably, but he highly doubted that he'd be getting any alcohol any time soon. Outside his window, the screams of tires and honking of horns echoed in the hazy, smoggy streets, the occasional helicopter beam grazing over his window and adding some light to his white room.

He let his head thump against the wall mirror, his breath misting the glass. Well, he was stuck. It wouldn't do for him to risk jumping off a building or something to try and get back into the Lifestream, although he had considered this option; there was no guarantee, as in business and finance, of a direct return and Rufus was no gambler.

If he guessed correctly, then Tseng would soon be assigned to him as a "late" birthday present from his father. Rufus remembered highly disliking Tseng when they had first met because of his race and how his mother disappeared almost immediately after the Wutaian man came into the young Shinra's life. Maybe, if he played his cards right…

Rufus didn't feel tired, the mako still pumping strong in his veins as he made his way over to the closet. It was filled with tame, formal suits with a few pajamas on a small rack. For the first time, the young Shinra heir grinned a grin that shouldn't have been perfected until he was seventeen and picked out a long, buttoned white coat, black turtleneck from the pajama pile, a vested white jacket, and a pair of too large white dress pants meant for him to grow into.

It would take some work; Rufus had never been good at sewing and he didn't have the necessary materials. But he felt the first blooms of a direction in this old new life as he reached for a pair of scissors lying at the base of the desk lamp. Using his nails to flick of dried flecks of blood, he meandered over to the mirror, clothing in tow, and observed the tame, childish haircut with distain before slipping the scissors beneath the childish locks.

He'd cut it away, carve himself a new image. The scissors sliced, snipping away at the blond strands.

_What do you want with me?_

He still didn't have the answer to his question, but he could try. Try until he either royally screwed up or succeeded. It wasn't like he had much of a choice otherwise.


	3. East of Eden

He used to imagine that he was kissing his mother when he kissed Tseng.

He hadn't expected it to change their relationship in the slightest, and he had been correct. Tseng told him in the third year of their relationship that he sometimes imagined that Rufus was his older sister when Tseng was buried inside of him. Rufus remembered laughing, bringing his right arm up to play with a lock of his own hair as his lover and bodyguard leaned down over him, both their pants around their knees atop Rufus's office desk.

"We're a real shit-fuck of a pair, aren't we?" he had breathed as a slight smile crept onto his lover's face. "My mother and I, your sister and you…"

"Regular, walking Oedipus complexes…" Tseng had bent over to kiss the angular bone of his jaw, careful to avoid the bruises masked by cosmetic skin-colour foundation, "except both of our fathers reject us."

Again Rufus had laughed and brought a hand up to play with his bodyguard's long tresses, marveling in the fine softness. Tseng chuckled and trailed a hand down his boss's thin, young body, a tender gesture that he knew aroused Rufus like no other. For a child who had lived most of his life without being touched in such a way, normally manhandled except for the moments before his mother had left, such gentleness was like a drug and Rufus had become addicted to it.

"Hey," Tseng had mock-snapped, frowning playfully, "don't tell me that you only like this because it reminds you of your mother."

Their laughter had been low and secret, vibrating against each other's bodies. Tseng used to always make Rufus laugh up until the Turk had died.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

2

_East of Eden_

--

It was like he was having a very bad dream.

The boy was sitting cross-legged in his underwear before a wall mirror, hair on the floor around him and scissors going at a white button-down coat, at six in the morning. Soft strains of what sounded suspiciously like the orchestrations of a tragic opera were coming from a CD player in the wall. Humming along with the melody of the music, the boy seemed perfectly oblivious to the new presence in his room as he glanced repeated back and forth between a sketch taped to the wall and the fabric in his hands.

Tseng noticed then as he observed the boy's eyes that there was a green glow strong in the blue, the sure signs of a recent familiarity with mako treatments. As he watched, he realized that the younger male wasn't oblivious to his presence, occasionally using the mirror to glance over in his direction, alternatively humming and softly singing along with the voices of the opera. He seemed to prefer to since the women's parts, perhaps because his voice was still childish and not low enough to properly rumble along with a baritone's or caress the sweeter notes of the tenor.

"Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to introduce yourself?"

Tseng nearly jumped; the voice was so young and yet so cold. The eyes were completely trained on him through the mirror now, the scissors no longer going and the opera singers chorusing on their own, and they held a trace of amusement. A soft chuckle, frightening its maturity, escaped the boy and he reached up to lightly push his carefully cut hair from his left eye.

"I wasn't expecting any visitors this early," he started in a half-conversational, half-absentminded tone. "I must apologize for my lack of attire; I would have dressed properly if I'd known."

Feeling that he couldn't avoid talking a moment longer, Tseng made his way fully into the room and reached surveyed the various messes around the room. Fabric and hair littered the space around the president's son and the mirror, blood was splattered over papers and the desk on the other side of the room, and the bed covers showed evidence of some sort of great struggle. He filed the information to investigate later.

"I'm Tseng, a Turk assigned to you for your protection now that you're of age to begin to take on duties in Shinra, sir. I wasn't expecting to find you up this early either, and please accept my apologies for entering unannounced."

A strange look passed over the boy's face, almost like the ghost of pain, like some sort of memory had been soiled or a nerve had pinched suddenly. He abruptly caught himself from making another of his frightening laughs and seemed to struggle with himself for a few moments. Soprano and tenor harmony went on in the background, and Tseng watched his young charge breath deeply and reach up to unconsciously rearrange his once more straying hair.

"Don't call me 'sir'," he said in a bitter tone, standing up and walking over to the open closet, taking a back suit and grey vest from their hangers. "Call me 'Rufus'."

The silence was so tense that Tseng felt like he could reach out and touch it. Palpable as the heavy aura that hung around Rufus, the tension flowed like the minor key of the tragic duet playing out from the CD player. He watched as the boy pulled on the pants first, fastening the too-large waistline by the last loop of a belt, then a white shirt before the grey vest and finally the black jacket.

"Very well… Rufus," the Wutaian man responded, the name—the familiarity it seemed to allude to—feeling odd on his tongue.

Blue eyes rimmed in green turned abruptly and surveyed the still, quiet, patient Turk with a business gaze lacking the warmth of a human being. It made Tseng with that the unexplained episode pain would return to Rufus's face. The boy's next words surprised Tseng.

"Could I…" the eyes were downcast suddenly, secretive, regretful, guilty, "see my mother?"

Tseng opened his mouth, a frown in his mind. "She's your mother. You need not ask me for permission. I'm just your bodyguard."

Another laugh, a bit on the hysterical side but still so cold. "You haven't worked for my father for very long, have you?" Rufus's voice carried the same slightly hysterical note as his laugh had. "I forgot. No matter. If you were not told, then it is not allowed."

With an odd, sudden desperation, Rufus swung around and almost flew over to the CD player, popping the top on the thing without bothering to stop the voices first. Tseng watched in abstract fascinations as the boy plucked the opera disk out, snapped another up from the small rack next to the player, and immediately began playing a strange, ungodly overture for another. As abruptly as these action occurred, the Shinra heir whirled around and spoke in a controlled but frantic tone, his right hand pointing at the door behind Tseng.

"Leave."

His voice was soft but so commanding, so strangely knowing that Tseng almost swung around right then. Only his knowledge of the importance of his duty and his growing curiousity in the seemingly mad Rufus Shinra kept him from obediently going out the door.

"Rufus," Tseng began gently, taking a step forward, "I can't do that."

"No," the boy suddenly cried, flinging up his hands and tugging at his hair. "Don't say that!" He took in a deep shaking breath and said, seemly now talking more to himself than Tseng, "Oh, of course you'd say that. You always said that. But you don't know. No one knows. No one…"

Tentatively, Tseng took another step forward. "Rufus," he said again in the calming voice that he'd heard his sister use when their father had gotten really angry.

"Leave," the boy bit out, sitting down on the bed, his body sagging and trembling, still weak from mako treatments. "I don't _need_ you!" he exclaimed with unnatural quickness, as if the idea had just occurred to him. "I'm perfectly capable of protecting myself. I'm not weak. I don't want you…"

And just as suddenly as the control had been lost, he seemed to come back to himself with a bark of hysterical laughter before burying his face in his hands. No tears were shed, and he just sat there for a long time, breathing slowly as the first vocal strains of the opera _Oedipus Rex_ began.

Tseng didn't know how it happened, but in those few minutes he felt like he had found a purpose, one that completely contradicted his former attitude towards his assignment. Yes, the Turk was intrigued, but he could also feel something else in his heart for his charge when the boy looked up and gave him a withering look but not demanding that he leave again. Rufus was so old in his demeanor, so strange and tragic for a boy who literally could have everything. He didn't quite think the boy mad just yet, but his way of speaking, his behavior… Perhaps Tseng's purpose as a bodyguard meant more than protecting the boy from others.

"You're not going to leave." Rufus's voice was flat, unfeeling.

"No."

A sigh, world-weary and well-practiced. "Figures."

--

President Shinra stamped the last page of a carefully written page of print. He smiled silently to himself and placed the order into his "Out" box, thinking nothing more of it for the time being.


	4. The Elements of Style

_He tipped the bottle up to his lips again, not caring that his father was probably watching from one of the many cameras. The vodka sloshed between his lips and burned its way down his throat before he dropped the now empty bottle, letting out a heavy, sighing cough as he heard it land and crack on the metal floor of his office. Rufus made the mistake of turning to the window then and catching the unnatural red flush on his thin, pale face, the very image of the broken child that he was._

_Groaning, the Vice President got up and staggered over to the small bar next to his office door, kicking the cracked vodka bottle out of his way. He reached indiscriminately into the open cabinet, yanking out a new bottle that turned out to be cognac before returning unsteadily to his desk chair. Using his letter opening knife, he tore the top off the bottle violently and took a mouthful of the wine-based brandy, imagining how his father must be laughing now as he watched his truest rival, his only son, drown away his inner conflicts in alcohol._

_Slamming the bottle down on the desk top, Rufus breathed heavily, feeling suddenly very queasy, and his mind floated in a sort of buzzed daze. He breathed slowly as the room swam around him, attempting to regain at least some of his bearing, until—_

"_Rufus!"_

_Tseng was at his side even as the door slammed shut, lifting the Vice President's bleary, unfocused gaze to his own. Rufus's right hand was still on the neck of the cognac bottle, several good mouthfuls missing from the container. Tseng's eyes, lusciously dark and full of concern, pity, and sadness, looked into the dead, drunken blue._

"_Tseng…" he managed to slur out, "what're you doin' 'ere…?"_

"_What did he do to you?" The Turk was sitting him up straight, brushing blond hair away from the pale face, eyes fixed on the dark bruise on Rufus's jaw. "How much have you had to drink?"_

"_Dunno…" Rufus giggled—a sure sign that he was almost pass-out drunk. "He's watchin'… all th' time…"_

"_Rufus…" _

_Tseng reached out to him, but Rufus automatically flinched away from the touch, too intoxicated to try to hide his fears. The Turk paused and rested his hand on his charge's lower arm, keeping himself below eye level to appear less threatening._

"_What did he do to you?" he repeated, catching Rufus's hand before it snagged the cognac again._

_Rufus laughed, laughed, hiccupped, and cried at the same time. "What he always does. You know the way…" Abruptly his laughter subsided, replaced by heavy breathing. "Tseng…" he moaned, dropping to his knees, off the chair and to level with Tseng's kneeling form._

_He leaned forward, pressing his young, thin body against Tseng's broader, more muscular one, running a tongue along his bodyguard's jaw. Tseng seemed frozen, but Rufus could feel something from where his left hand had slipped against the Turk's pants that betrayed that stillness, betrayed the restraint. Grinning, the Shinra heir slipped his left hand behind the other man's waistband and belt, feeling the hardening appendage there with wandering, smooth fingers, earning a sharp intake and muffled response._

"_Your father—"_

"_Can go die…" _

_Rufus groaned, tightening his cupped hold in the other's pants as Tseng let out a hiss, capturing the teen's mouth in his own. He felt the older man slip hands beneath his shirt, feeling the contours of his bony ribs, flitting up to his nipples, drawing small circles around the quickly hardening nubs._

"_You should gain some weight… Give me something to hold on to."_

"_Give something for my father to cut off me, more like. God, I'm glad I'm not a girl."_

"_Rufus…"_

"_Shut up, Tseng, and fuck me."_

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

3

_The Elements of Style_

--

Tseng found Reeve Tuetsi, a young and upcoming worker in intelligence, stretched out over a window seat on the atrium level of the Shinra Company Building, an exhausted look on his face and a cigarette dangling between his thumb and middle finger as he stared listlessly out at the lights and darkness. The Turk noticed that the circles under Reeve's eyes had darkened considerably since he'd last seen him, certain hollowness now present in his cheeks and eyes. In the moments it took for Reeve to cross the room from the elevator, he saw Reeve lift the cigarette up to his lips and inhale deeply.

In the multicolored light of Midgar's night, he could see Reeve's cigarette hand shaking. Sitting down next to his friend, Tseng watched the hollow eyes flicker over to his own, saw the recognition there, before returning to the industrial landscape outside.

"I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't," Reeve said in a low tone, lifting the brown and white stick back to his lips and taking another deep drag.

"How was your first official information collection for Shinra?"

Reeve gave a hysterical laugh not unlike Rufus's earlier that same day. "Perfect!" he said in a choked tone. "Wonderful. Great. Oh, who am I kidding?"

He angrily stubbed the cigarette out on the glass of the window. The two sat in silence, both mulling over their own thoughts.

--

Rufus was screaming. The servants outside of the door winced and pretended they were deaf.

"Where is my mother?" they heard the boy shrieking; "Where is she?"

President Shinra's voice sounded over the shrill cries. "I told you, you damn brat: I don't know and get back to work!"

There was a crash and the scream of the Shinra heir echoed through the rooms. A few of the newer servants choked back cries of their own while the older ones took them with the emotional barrier they'd built up over the years. Abruptly the door to the master bedroom slammed open, and the black suited boy came stumbling out, blood running down one cheek in place of tears.

"I hate you!" Rufus screamed, startling the older servants who had never known the boy to be this blunt to his father. "Give her back! She's my mother, my blood, my _soul_. Rip her away from me and you will suffer because she is my soul, and if I loose it, Planet help you!"

"Shut up, boy!"

"No!" Rufus seemed to have lost his mind, and his voice became even louder, shriller. "You know where she is. I know you do; it was your order! Give her back. Give her fucking back!"

Red suit and corpulent belly preceded the President to the door. The servants would normally have run at this point, but they were transfixed by the mixed look of shock and rage on their president's face and the glowing, green light in the heir's eyes. They had always considered the young Shinra to be a bit off a pushover when it came to physical violence, always running either to his mother's side or begging for forgiveness. This was something that had never occurred and, yet, secretly they felt it appropriate although they would never say so.

"Was it nice to watch it all happening from the safety of your office?" Rufus bit out in the sudden silence, his voice shaking. "Did my dear mother scream as she died? Did you have your paid cronies screw her? Or were you jealous because she squirmed under them and she never did for you?"

They should have expected it. They should be known from experience, but they still couldn't help but jump, cry out, and wince when the President socked his son across his face and kicked the boy in the stomach. Not surprisingly, the boy let out another cry, but he did not cry like a normal child did; only curled up into a fetal ball, a hand seemingly reaching out for something that wasn't there. No tears came to the eyes, only fire and rage, biting determination as Rufus heaved himself into a kneeling position like a beaten dog making a last, futile stand.

Silence, heavy breathing, and then, "I hit a sore spot, didn't I, _Father_?" He laughed somewhat hysterically. "Mother didn't love you, but she loved me. And you were _jealous_. You hated the way she would cry when you took her. Isn't that true, Father? You were jealous of me."

And the boy managed to laugh before the next slamming punched knocked him out.

--

Even as he floated in the insane, unworldly pain of his second mako treatment in two days, Rufus found himself oddly conscious, the green world in his mind filled with odd little shimmers and ripples. Although he knew that he was screaming, the sound was muted to a low hum.

_I couldn't save her._

He wandered aimlessly around his own mind, through the never-ending expanse of half-consciousness.

_I can't change things._

The green rippled, like water, and he stopped, reaching out and passing a hand through one of the ripples, a burning feeling striking his flesh.

_Why did you choose me?_

Softly, he began to hum to himself, sitting down in the nothingness, arms wrapped around his knees.

_What do you want me to change?_

Distantly, he heard something new from the corporal world, a raspy, intrigued voice. "What the…?"

_Do you want me to kill Jenova?_

A strange beeping was growing louder and the raspy voice was muttering, "Interesting… strange; this reaction, I've never seen it before."

_Do you want me to stop Sephiroth?_

The green was suddenly less painful, warmer, almost comforting. He could feel cold air on his chest in the real world, but he reached out again to the now fading green shimmers, his heart pounding.

_Stop my father?_

"Where are my notes?" Sounds of scrambling and things falling sounded outside, steadily growing clearer. "Such compatibility, never before seen without Jenova infusions. Damn, where did I put my fucking notes!"

_Stop myself?_

Green faded and Rufus opened his eyes to the bright, watchful eyes of one Shinra Head Scientist whose hands are filled with a garble of papers and instruments. For a moment, Hojo stared down at him, a bead of sweat rolling down his left temple and alert eyes watching his boss's son with a critical eye that lacked its normal resentment. They stared at each other for a long moment, stared and stared.

Hojo spoke first, his voice surprisingly soft, almost gentle. "Will you…" the man reached over, dropping his papers and lifting a green ball from the tray, "try this?"

_Change myself?_

It was weak Restore materia, obviously not strong enough to cast more than a Cure 1, but he accepted it into his hand when it was pressed there. He'd never had talent for materia before, but, this time when he willed the orb, he watched it glisten and observed the sparkles wafting over his body, easing away some of the pain, dulling the dark colour of some of the bruises. Rufus stared at the materia, frowning, concentrating, and ignoring the way Hojo was back to his muttering before—

"Don't tell my father."

Hojo paused, casting the Shinra heir a wary eye, surveying the way the boy was turning the materia over in his hands. Rufus frowned, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply.

"If you don't tell my father, I'll allow you to experiment on me. Infuse me with mako on a regular basis, at least."

"…Fine. You're free to go. I'll call for you."

"No." Rufus shook his head. "I'll come to you."

Rufus got up off the table and left the room, a little unsteady and with the Restore materia still in hand.

_But… you changed things already for me…_


	5. Brave New World

Occasionally Rufus had done stupid things. All children occasionally did things that were inappropriate, and all teenagers had moments of moodiness or rebellion. Being the so-called privileged, media-hounded Shinra heir, though, all his stupid mistakes had been feed and bloated like hogs before a slaughter on the television news and tabloids.

There had been the young girl he'd met at one of the many Shinra parties, the one that had laughed genuinely and had had a real eye for business, especially finance. She hadn't been especially pretty, and he knew that there were no feeling between them, but they'd kissed that night, two fourteen-year-old kids with too much responsibility in their family companies. The media had aired hundreds of images of them together in the weeks to follow, called them a match like none other.

Her name, one of the few he'd ever bothered to learn, had been Louise. He'd had sex with a girl for the first time with her, but they'd both approached the incident with a business eye and only lust in mind.

"I don't love you," she had told him on her fifteenth birthday. "I know you don't love me. This relationship is just good for publicity, you know."

Rufus remembered sipping his glass of water and zipping up his pants. "You have someone else, too, then?"

Louise had sat up, her small, expressive breasts exposed as she reached to the bedside table, picking up the small hotel clock there, and inspecting the time. One thing that had fascinated Rufus about her besides the fact she cared nothing for his power was the way she gripped things, as if everything was special and sensual.

She sighed and reached over to her bra. "My father wouldn't approve of him, but he's quite a striker. Not pretty like you, but very manly; strong and virile. He works in my father's finance department. What about you?"

Outside of the small circle of loyal Turks, she had been the only one he'd ever told about Tseng, and, as he'd expected, she'd only nodded, adjusting the stretched straps of her bra as she had done so.

"I guess this is the end, huh?" he'd said, shrugging on a grey dress shirt.

"It was fun." Louise was always quick at dressing. "I guess since I'm breaking up with you, I should pay the bill."

"Don't bother. You did so last time."

"I hope things turn out well for you," she'd said before leaving the room, not giving him a chance to answer.

A few weeks later, Rufus had heard on the morning news that Louise and an unnamed male had disappeared, last seen on a motorcycle together, heading for Costa del Sol but never arriving. He had received the news and said nothing, done nothing, but had felt just the tiniest pang of regret that Louise was dead when Tseng sent her parents flowers for him.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

4

_Brave New World_

--

"Bluh…"

He felt very unintelligent this morning and did not appreciate the gentle shaking of his shoulder by Tseng. Rufus gave another groan and reached up, pulling his pillow over his head. Never before had he felt this tired.

"Rufus, you need to wake up."

In response, the young heir burrowed deeper into the bed, a technique perfected from years of trying to hide from different attacking forces. Tseng, however, simply yanked the covers back, sending a bright green ball of Cure materia flying across the room and eliciting some rather advanced language for a twelve-year-old.

"Tseng, you goddamn –"

"You need to be at work in half an hour. It wouldn't do to be late on your first day, would it?"

Pale skin and green-rimmed blue eyes turned blearily to Tseng, a strangely dignified face of disgruntled exhaustion glaring up at him. The boy mumbled something under his breath, but nevertheless stood up and staggered his way over to the mess of sewing on the floor still, yanking the black turtleneck out from under the unfinished coat and yanking it over his half-naked body but not before the little bruises of injections on the underside of his arm flashed ugly, beetle-like eyes at the Turk.

Tseng frowned and wondered why Rufus had received another mako treatment, and if that was related to the materia lying next to the door innocently. Indeed, the boy did look even more haggard than the day before, a shallow look to his face as he ducked into the closet and yanking out a belt and white pants. The clothing preference was beginning to make the Turk wonder if the heir was colorblind.

"Vice President Rufus Shinra…" the boy said aloud seemly to himself, as if testing it out on his tongue; he made a face. "Tseng."

Fighting away the urge to blink in slight surprise, the Turk approached until he stood several feet away from his charge. "Yes?"

"How long have you been in the Turks?"

"Two years. Since the start of the Wutai war."

Wandering over to the stray Cure materia, Rufus pocketed it in his pants and began to tuck on boots, his hair apparently to be left brilliantly messy for the time being. The digital clock blinked a sad twenty-seven minutes to six in the morning.

"Why did you come to work for Shinra?" Rufus asked, glancing at Tseng out of the corner of his mako-glow eyes. "My father and this company are killing your people."

It was a test. Tseng knew it, could sense that there was no childish innocence in the question. He balanced the situations and its consequences delicately, thinking of the boy's obvious dislike for his father, the position he had in the boy's life. Indeed, Rufus had done nothing to make Tseng dislike him, although he did find the young heir mysterious and a bit, frankly, frightening. When he became the president of Shinra… Tseng's mission had suggested he befriend the boy to off-set the stress of the transition.

"It was my own choice."

Rufus let out a laugh much like a bark and headed for the door, now ready. "You don't really expect me to believe that, right?"

Tseng shrugged, not as annoyed as he would normally have felt. "Well, it was my choice technically. My family received passage out of Wutai and into hiding because I joined Shinra. I don't have to join exactly."

For a moment, as they headed down a couple levels of stairs to the car waiting outside, the only sounds were their feet stepping hollowly on the metal floor and some water running somewhere on the bottom floor. The car ride was short, only taking about seven or so minutes, but they couldn't risk walking outside. Tseng noticed that Rufus was fighting to avoid dozing off in the passenger seat, his still messy hair occasionally brushing against the window as his head drooped.

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Do you have something you want to accomplish as Shinra heir?"

They pulled up in front of the building and got out of the car, heading for the door as the clock inched towards a quarter to six. Rufus began to rake his hands through his hair, making a bang-up job of attempting to look like he hadn't just fallen out of bed, throwing Tseng a secretive smile before they entered the camera-infested jungle.

"I didn't used to," he said evasively.

--

Reeve felt like destroying a paperclip.

He never used to like destroying random desk objects. In fact, back at home, he'd always been the kind of guy who kept everything obsessively clean even when he was in one of his creative moods. But the truth of the moment was that he was sitting in his little cubicle office, one floor below the Turk headquarters, with a mess of reports on the floor and open file cabinet and several mutilated paperclips sticking out of a squashed breakfast muffin.

Someone knocked on the wall of his cubicle and came in without waiting for the intelligence researcher to respond. Tseng's dark hair and calm face appeared, closely followed by a rather tired-looking blond boy whose eyes flickered unexplainably when his and Reeve's eyes met.

"And this, Rufus," Tseng was saying, "is Reeve Tuetsi. Since you've been put in charge of security as Vice President, you'll be dealing a lot with him. Reeve, this is Rufus Shinra."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Reeve Tuetsi," Rufus said in a groomed, formal tone, automatically stepping forward and offering his hand.

"Err." Reeve compulsively grasped the hand offered and shook, nodding. "Pleasure to meet you, too, Vice President Shinra, sir."

"Call me, Rufus, or Vice President. Shinra is my father."

"Right. Of course."

There was an awkward silence as Rufus's eyes flickered to the squashed breakfast muffin and paperclips before removing his hand from Reeve's with practiced delicacy. Tseng stood, not moving, as if waiting for something to happen, and Reeve's mind was suddenly overrun by cats on moogles all fighting over the same fish. Tseng cleared his throat, noting the vacant look in Reeve's eyes and the increasingly interested expression on Rufus's face—both of which, the Turk was quickly learning, were not good signs.

"Rufus, we should go upstairs to the Turk headquarters."

The boy nodded and exited the cubicle, but Tseng lingered back for a moment. Reeve blinked after his new boss.

In an undertone, Tseng asked, "What do you think of him?"

Reeve picked up another paperclip and murmured, "He's hiding something. No child, no matter the upbringing, acts like that."

Tseng nodded and hastily exited after his charge. Reeve stuck the newly mutilated paperclip into his muffin and thought it went rather nicely with the rest.

--

"…_Mrs. Shinra's was reported missing this morning since two days ago. At this time there are no further details being released to the press, but we will be sure to keep you updated on this story…"_

_- Midgar 2 o'clock afternoon news_

--

Notes: Drop me a review to tell me how I'm doing. I'm curious to see what people think of this fic.

(In other words, I'd like some reviews. Because I like my ego stroked just as much as the next person, and I'm desperate for constructive criticism.)


	6. The Dollmaker

It wasn't true that Rufus Shinra had never bled or cried.

His father, Solomon Shinra, had beaten his boy until the day the old man had died. Rufus didn't know why he'd let the beatings happen, didn't know why he'd board the helicopter back to Midgar from Junon when he knew his father was going to beat him. But he'd gone back every time, just like the blond retriever that Solomon had once compared him to, to lie at his father's feet, his white vest bloody and the red liquid smeared all over the floor.

And he'd bled in other places. When he was three, he'd fallen down and scraped his knees. Once, when he had been visiting the coast of the first time, there had been a pile of rocks just beneath a small ledge that his father had shoved him off at night; instead of a splash, there had been five cracked bones and a broken rib through the skin. On the balcony of a seaside hotel, he'd lain one summer night with a vodka and gin, a long gash down the underside of his right arm and not enough courage to finish an identical incision on the left.

It wasn't true that he had never cried either. Tears were a strange thing for Rufus Shinra; they were clear, colourless, not like the smoggy glass and amber gin. In some ways, he had always thought that tears were a testimony to his humanity more than his blood, which, he felt, was spilt so carelessly it could barely count as a life sustaining substance. Sometimes he had even cried just to prove to himself that he was alive, that he was human enough, conscious enough, to taste the bitter salt on his lips.

When he had been six, he'd learned to cry silently, to cry only when no one was looking. In the years that had followed, he'd always cried in silence, but, sometimes, Tseng had been there and would hold him, whispering that it would be okay. Rufus had clung to Tseng in moments like that, had clung to the solid Turk that night when he slashed open his right arm, sobbing without sound or control because there was no volume that could match the mournful intensity the lost inhumanity of his soul.

It wasn't until Tseng had died in the Temple of the Ancients that Rufus cried in front of anyone else. Reno, Rude, and Elena had been there to report it to him, Elena in tears already and the two men distraught but tried to hide their emotions. They had looked to him in that moment for his inhumanity, for his stability, and had found only the boy, the boy who had grown up beaten and bitter. He'd tried, tried so hard not to cry that time because there would be no one to hold him anymore, to tell him things would be alright, and he hadn't been sure if he'd ever be able to stop crying if he started.

And he'd felt that first tear fall only to be followed by another and then another. He remembered the agonizing moments that passed as slowly first Reno and then Rude cracked, and then suddenly they were all crying—Elena wailing, Reno and Rude sobbing, and Rufus silent until something had just broken within himself and the tears stopped feeling human and pure.

Then he had stopped crying because he no longer had anyone to cry for.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

5

_The Dollmaker_

--

Sadly, even with all the funding that went and would go into the Science Department, Hojo's laboratory really did not change no matter how much time passed. It still stank of chemicals that he couldn't name, and the air still had that heavy feel, like someone or something was just waiting for a devastating event to happen.

Tseng looked around bitterly and was still viciously against coming to this level, but Rufus had been adamant about visiting the Head Scientist after the introductory meeting to the top staff that he had been obviously very bored and annoyed at. The Turk was beginning to understand his charge at least on surface levels; it was all in watching the eyes, the slight twitch of a finger, the occasional gravitation of fingers to hair.

"Hojo!"

Several assistants squeaked and swung around from their stations, looking about for the source of the sharp, authoritative tone before figuring out where it had come from. Rufus effectively ignored them, suddenly sweeping through the tangles of machines towards the slightly hunched figure in the back of the mess. Tseng followed, mentally recording their route and noting the ease of the boy's navigation.

The older man, his hair long and lanky, was watching them approached with a sort of pleased and vaguely shocked manner, so unused to have a treated subject willingly return so soon. Rufus was already extracting the Restore materia from his pocket.

"Give me something else."

For a moment Hojo just stared, his expression reflecting the current chaos going on in Tseng's own brain. Reeve had his cats and moogles; Tseng had bright red birds with purple tails. And those birds screamed something nasty.

"What?"

Rufus made a face that was undeniably cute, a sort of pleading but evil gaze. "Give me another materia to test."

Tseng wondered what kind of animal Hojo had running around in his brain. Maybe he had sea monsters, dragons, elephants, mice.

"What would you like?"

Yes, definitely something very large, something the size of Kalm, and apparently increasing in size. Hojo had given Rufus a Fire materia, and the boy and the scientist were exchanging pleased smiles and muttering about something of a secret.

--

"_I've heard about an uprising in the slums of Sector Seven. It's not very big yet, but they've got some strong-arms and a couple of computer wizard monkeys on their side. They're not anything to worry about at this point, but I'd keep a watch on the ID checks for any suspicious characters."_

"Damn."

He stopped the tape and removed the earphones, tossing them off to the side as he went to shift through one of his many stacks of papers, grumbling inaudibly under his breath.

It wasn't that Reeve didn't like his job. Really, he did. Nowhere else would he get this kind of pay for writing up detailed reports on the state of various rebel fractions. The coffee in the break room on his floor was top-notch and there was a never-ending supply of magazines down at the atrium on the sixty-first floor. He had friends, good friends.

But there were things he didn't like about his job. He didn't like the gun they pressed into his hands when they sent him to collect information in the slums. Sometimes, when he worked late, he could hear strange things coming down the stairwells, screams sometimes but more often pathetic crying. There were strange stories that circulated about the General Sephiroth, stories that whispered that he was inhuman, and about the new Vice President, stories that whispered that he was insane.

Boys, Reeve thought; that was all those two were. They were boys, children forced to grow up too fast. He had never had the chance to meet the young General, but he imagined that the silver-haired hero couldn't be much different from the young Shinra. Perhaps he wore a different look in his eyes, the blood-drenched look of blankness, or maybe the General spoke in a more natural tone.

"Tuetsi, you wouldn't happen to have a copy of the memo set out last Wednesday to the front would you?"

"Um…" Reeve abandoned his paper pile, unable to find what he had been looking for and reached into the stack of pink and yellow memos next to his mouse. "I think so; give me a moment."

Rude hid a yawn behind one hand, a bored expression on his face as he watched the intelligence officer flip through the top of the stack. "I heard you met the new Vice President."

Reeve frowned; he could have sworn…. "Yeah, I did."

"The kid's weird."

"Certainly. Ah, here it is."

He passed the yellow sheet written in a scrawling hand to the Turk who took it, frowning slightly down at it.

"You know, I met Sephiroth once."

Reeve found himself suddenly paying attention despite him. "Really."

"Yeah," the normally non-talkative Turk nodded. "Strange boy, of course; didn't smile or make noise. He was really curious about everything, though. 'Seemed to love to learn new things."

"Oh?"

Rude nodded, tucking the memo away. "I kind of felt sorry for him. It was so obvious he was dying to find out what exactly was making the microwave work and where everyone was going, but he seemed to think it inappropriate to ask."

"When did you meet him?"

"The day before he left with the rest of the first troops for Wutai," Rude answered, turning to leave. "I'll pass the memo onto Veld. Bye."

Reeve waved absently after him before diving into his sea of papers to find everything he could about the strange children associated with Shinra. Curiousity killed the cat, but he wasn't superstitious. At least not horribly.

…Alright, fine. Reeve was extremely superstitious. But his curiousity always got the better of him in the end.

--

Note: Before I go forward with this anymore, I'm going to clear up the important ages of the characters that I have planned out thus far for this fic so that _a)_ you, the reader, may avoid confusion, and _b)_ I, the writer, can keep consistency because ages are like telephone numbers that way.

Rufus Shinra age 12  
Tseng Chak-Wong age 18  
Rude Hortensio age 21  
Reeve Tuetsi age 23  
Reno Kiribani age 13  
Sephiroth age 15  
Zack age 17


	7. White Fang

_Stop Sephiroth._

It was, literally, complete déjà vu, and Rufus decided, as he sat in the too big chair at the too big desk in the too big office, that he didn't like déjà vu at all. No.

_But Sephiroth isn't evil yet._

No one was truly evil. It was something that Rufus believed as a shield against guilt for his own actions. A white clock, identical to the one on his bedside table in his bedroom, blinked seconds by as he rolled the Fire materia from Hojo back and forth between his hands.

_Stop Father._

His father hadn't set up the cameras in every corner of the building yet; that wasn't set to happen for another two years. Rufus glared at the glowing green of the materia and clutched it just slightly, just enough to feel the beginning of the elementary spell. He was starting to become cold again, having eaten barely anything since his arrival in this time period. Before, with the Geostigma and even further back with his own psychological problems, he had always been cold, and warmth had become a novelty, coveted.

_But how do I do that? Do I… kill him?_

Rufus looked up from the materia and stared at the door of his office, thinking of Tseng. The Turk had taken leave of him about half an hour ago to retrieve information from Veld, his commander, and to attend to other duties, assuming that Rufus was safe within his own office. It was another thing that would change soon enough as the gradual decreases and eventual alien nature of privacy would set in.

_I used to fantasize about killing my father._

His favorite fantasy had been gunning his father down with a machine gun right in public so everyone could see that the Shinra name was just a name and they still were human. He'd tried going through a back door route with funding AVALANCHE, but that had failed, failed miserably.

_I'll have to do it myself._

Diamond Weapon had given him a strange confidence and Geostigma had given him a strange humility. It wasn't his first choice to do his own "dirty work" as Reno would have put it, but after living in a proverbial hell for a few years, Rufus had resigned himself to the fact that, sometimes, the only way to guaranty something was to do it oneself.

_How?_

He had to play politics now but without the soft cushion of distance or leadership to soften any backlash. The Fire materia spun in his grasp, and he scowled. He'd grown soft since going to Junon; he was going to miss that cushion. And his age in this time… Well, either it could work to his advantage or be his downfall. Rufus was not a prophet, was a planner and schemer by nature, and he knew that his ability to use materia in this way was no mistake, perhaps his sole compensation for dying in the first place.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

6

_White Fang_

--

Three months had gone by and Tseng was beginning to doubt that he would understand his young charge.

"Reports, Tseng. There were supposed to be mission reports from the Turks forwarded to me by today," Rufus was saying, scribbling furiously away on a memo page. "Do you happen to know anything about the delay?"

For one thing, Rufus was always asking Tseng questions as if they had known each other for their entire lives. It disturbed the Turk that he was slowly becoming so at ease with his charge, slowly falling into step with the boy's admitted erratic schedule and scattered thought process.

"No. Veld is out sick today, though, so that might be the reason," Tseng answered, absentmindedly handing the boy a red stamp pad. "I read over some of the more important reports, though, and nothing really has happened. Jobs have been clean the past few months."

The boy made a humming sound that seemed to be correlated with displeasure but said nothing else. Several moments passed as Rufus stamped envelopes with a pensive look on his face, and once again Tseng had to remind himself that the boy really was a boy. Twelve; not even old enough to marry back in Wutai.

"…I need those reports." Rufus's voice was low, a tone that the Turk had never heard but felt he would become familiar with. "All of them. It's important."

He hesitated. "There are some things that are classified, Rufus, by the President himself. You don't outrank him."

Blue eyes looked up, the whites tinged with a new mako treatment. It bothered Tseng that his charge took so many treatments so regularly; it was getting to the point where the mako was clearly becoming a part of him, playing crudely with his basic power, warping it. Yet the mako wasn't perfect, and today there still remained the ghost of a bruise below Rufus's right eye and the potted plant that had resided next to his desk was now curiously replaced with a closed cardboard box.

"My mother is missing, Tseng," he said in a cool, deliberate voice. "I don't think it's just a coincidence that my father suddenly decides to place me in this position as a… birthday gift, and that my mother suddenly seems to evaporate off the face of the planet all in the same two days."

Rufus's face had suddenly become slightly flushed, and Tseng realized he'd unconsciously closed the space between the two of them, the desk the only thing that kept them apart. He studied the boy, noticing that there were dark splotches forming under his eyes, that there was a certain kind of hollowness and growing fragility to the small form. Rufus seemed to withdraw as Tseng stared at him, his eyes breaking contact and moving off to the side, to the smog covered window and the sad remains of an untouched lunch.

"Don't look at me like that…"

"Like what?"

"Like…" Rufus swallowed and he reached for another paper defensively, still refusing to meet the other's gaze. "Go away, Tseng."

"I can't do that."

Again colour crept back up onto the pale face, and the boy set down his papers, lifting a hand the fiddle with his blond hair. He stared at the papers and the ink pad on the desk without seeing, rubbing the tips of his hair against his thumb. A strange determination had taken over his features, frightening more than the dark maturity that Rufus always held. Fingers curled deeper into the hair and mako-induced eyes grew intense.

"_Leave_."

A beat, and then, "What?"

Rufus stood up, and he walked over to a file cabinet, pulling a drawer open and taking out the green Fire materia. He brought it back to the desk, but, instead of sitting back down, he turned his back and looked out the window.

"You heard me." The materia had begun to glow. "Leave. Now."

Was his charge going to burn him out of the Vice President's own office? "No."

In a voice so low that Tseng almost missed the shaking, Rufus whispered, "I'll do it. You know I don't sleep at night, and I've had this for weeks now. Do think I'm a fool? I don't let my father's spies stay around for too long."

Tseng drew back one step as the glow intensified, and the mako in Rufus's eyes sharpened in colour. "I haven't been spying on you, Rufus," he said in the low, slow voice that his father used to use on his sister when she went into one of her scenes.

"Don't lie to me." Rufus powered up the materia further, but his hand was shaking.

"It was in my original orders," Tseng said in the calm tone although his heart was pounding. "I was supposed to report on any odd behavior you displayed. But I haven't. I wouldn't."

"_Why?_"

In truth, the Wutaian man wasn't too sure why he hadn't. He'd thought, at first, it was because he hated President Shinra and he thought Rufus was more competent despite his age. Perhaps it was because he was afraid and yet respectful of the boy. Maybe, just maybe, it was because he was curious and oddly attracted the aura about his charge.

"I don't know. You…" Tseng caught himself. "You remind me of someone."

Silence, long and heavy, until suddenly Rufus blinked, dropping the materia at the same time, the particularly activated object burning the metal where it landed. As if shields were being dragged away from the fortress, a deep pain penetrated through his gaze and Rufus, for the first time, seemed to crumple, become human.

Tseng made his way forward, came around the desk, and knelt before the shaking boy. "I've come to care about you, it seems," he mused.

Rufus seemed to struggle with himself a minute before he pulled back, a blank expression on his face as he reached down and picked up the dropped materia. "I need those reports, Tseng."

"I'll get them for you."

And Rufus, despite himself, smiled.

--

Rude was worried.

He worried a lot, really. He worried about his aging mother in the nursing home, about odd tingling he sometimes got on the back of his hand, about being the only Turk who had not yet been assigned a partner after nearly four years on the force. Lately, though, he had begun to worry about Tseng. The man was holing up more often now, and he had begun to do strange things, Wutaian things, like drinking his tea without using the cup's handle and taking a moment during the lunches he spent with the Turks to murmur thanks in to his god in his language.

But Rude was not a man to express himself in words. He had never been good with words, and children had laughed at his slow speaking style when he was young. Sometimes, though, he wished that he was better with words. Such a situation was now as he walked into Tseng's cubicle to find the man shoving an armload of photocopies into a large cargo bag.

"What…" Rude stopped as Tseng bolted upward like he'd been jabbed with an electro-mag rod.

"Rude."

They stared at each other for a moment, watching each other until Tseng gave him a small smile, almost sad, and then Rude knew what this was about. The Vice President… Rude still found it odd that his friend had become so attached to the younger male so quickly.

"You need to keep this secret, Rude." For a moment, his fellow Turk wavered in his determination, but the moment passed. "He's my charge."

"You're supposed to be keeping an eye on him, not supplying him with sensitive information."

"I know." Tseng had begun to stuff the papers into the bag again. "But I was also instructed to help him complete his work tasks. This is for work."

Life at Shinra was never simple. Just two days ago, Rude had seen the intelligence officer Reeve in the atrium on the sixty-first floor, a cigarette in hand and a crumpled piece of paper in his other fist. Reeve, Tseng, and Rude had all entered the company at about the same time, and their tentative friendship had been forced from the fact they all lived on the same floor of the second of the Shinra boarding houses provided for employees. They had begun with courteous familiarities and then progressed onto a few drinking nights, slowly growing into a contented routine relaxed state around each other.

"…I won't question you. It's not my place. But the Turk's first loyalty is to Shinra. You know that."

Tseng nodded and shouldered the bag, and, for a moment, they watched each other, distant in their own thoughts.

"Thank you, Rude."

Rude didn't say anything, a sinking feeling of worry in his gut, as he watched Tseng walk out of the cubicle, out of the other Turk's understanding and away from their former familiarity. It was unpleasant to watch a friend walk away in such a fashion and it made Rude worry. He worried an awful lot these days.


	8. Seize the Day

The water was cold, but the heat of the shower wouldn't go up any further. The stream of artificially purified water beat against his back and through his hair as he shivered. It looked like his father had cut off the hot water supply to Rufus's shower.

He didn't know why, but he found himself biting back the bitter tears that pricked at his eyes. No matter how much he came to hate his father, he couldn't deny the fact that part him—that toddler who remembered those scarce few times when the heavy-set man had given him proud smiles—wanted his father's approval. The harsh lighting in the bathroom was dimmer than normal, and it had been several days since Rufus's CD player had last worked.

Sliding the door to the shower open, he shut off the cold water and stepped out, shuddering as the cold air hit his naked form. There was nothing personal even in this private space, only a toothbrush at the sink and an odd stain near to the toilet bowl. For a moment, Rufus stood in the middle of the room, dripping and still, staring without sight at the stain, at the toilet, the porcelain god he'd worshiped in his many bouts of drunken nausea. The stain would fade in a few years, but it would never really go away, just like the memories would linger, like a callous constantly irritated.

He knew one thing for sure, though. He would have to kill his father soon before he grew into the helplessness he knew would set in, was already setting in. The mako could only do so much; even Hojo had said so in an uncharacteristic moment of humanity.

It was late and no one was in his quarters at this late hour. Rufus sat down next to the toilet, squeezing himself into the small corner there, letting tears trickle down his face and silent sobs rack his body.

_Who am I kidding? _He thought despairingly.

Who knew someone had to die to realize that they had never truly hated anyone in their life? It had seemed so simple: kill Solomon Shinra, stop Sephiroth, and destroy Jenova. Rufus sobbed soundlessly, knees pulled up to his chest. So simple, so clean-cut, and so easy; he'd killed many people before, but not like this. It was one thing to kill in defense or because one was in immediate danger; it was quite another to kill preventively, in cold blood like some perverse god of justice.

_Tseng…_ Images from a past not yet come surfaced and the tears streamed, warm in contrast to his cold skin. _I'm scared…_

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

7

_Seize the Day_

--

Day dawned black on Midgar as it always did. Reno had lived his entire life without ever seeing that thing they called the sun, that glowing yellow ball of light. He had grown up with green-glowing street lamps, tripping over drunks as he and his merry band of vagabond children flitted about in the shadows. Unlike most of the children, he could read, the product of the few crucial years he had spent living with his father until he was seven, and he read like a demon, stealing newspapers and books.

At thirteen years of age, Reno was the leader of a rather successful and relatively comfortable group of rag-tag street gamin. Their headquarters was his father's old house, and he was currently curled up on the corner of the toddler-size bed that he'd long since begun to outgrow with a faintly humming mako light and the day's morning paper. He could hear the rest of his band shifting around outside in the house, the beginning of the "day" signaling the younger, unskilled ones to get out and beg and the older ones to go make money in their own ways.

"Reno!" someone screamed, slamming the door to his room open as he finished another opinion article on the mako prices. "Francie came back drunk again!"

He snapped the paper shut and threw it to the foot of his bed, scowling at the girl in the doorway, his eyes narrowed and accented by the red tattoos beneath his eyes. She was perhaps a couple years older than Reno, wore a worn yellow terrycloth bathrobe over an oversized tee-shirt, and had several teeth missing from the left side of her mouth.

"I ain't a pimp, Jena," Reno grumbled, jumping off the bed and stalking out into the hall. "If she wants to fuck herself up like that, let her."

Jena scowled and shoved Reno, who glared at her. "She's losin' us money, little brother."

Reno growled and slapped her hand away. "Don't call me that, Jena. We ain't related no more since Dad died and your Mom left us. An' I'm in charge, an' I say if Francie wants to get drunk on the money she earns, then she has every bloody right to."

"Well, you know what, Reno?" Jena's voice was rising once more, attracting attention and waking up others as they passed into the full kitchen. "You're just like Francie. You're no real leader, and you sit in your room with your damn book an' papers when you should be out there making us money. You know how much Fry's kids are making off crack and stuff, but you ain't letting us –"

It wasn't often that Reno lost his temper, but in this moment he did. Jena saw it, saw the ice in the normally fired up eyes, the way the jaw twitch just slightly. Reno didn't shout when he was mad; no, he was much worse.

"So that's what you think?" He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, eyes drifting around the dank home. "You think you'd do better in charge? You think you'd do better sellin' crack and whores to people instead of keeping your dignity?"

"You're one to talk about dignity!" she shot back, suddenly enraged. "You, acting all Mister High an' Mighty, when you've got all that shame on _your_ hands!"

"Shut up."

"Don't think I don't know how you're really makin' your share of money! I know. I've known for a long time, but I kept quiet 'cause you was bringing back gil. You kill men, Reno. You kill 'em for Shinra or for them other big organizations. An' I know how you get to them, how you weasel your way around them. I've heard stories from clients, you know, and I ain't stupid. You suck cocks and then kill 'em."

And, just as abruptly as the outburst had occurred, Jena gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth, a shocked expression on her face at her own vulgarity. There was utter silence in the house, everyone who was around watching their leader, the slight tick in his lips, the start of a flush high on his cheek bones. Reno's breathing was ragged, and, for a moment, she actually feared that he would explode at her like his father used to.

Instead, he swept over out of the room for a few minutes before returning with a large backpack in one hand and his father's coat in the other. He was shaking as he went over to the cupboard where they kept the gil and extracted his envelope, stuffing it into his bag before turning sharply around to Jena, to his crew.

"You don't appreciate what I do?" Reno shrugged. "Fine, then. Jena, you're in charge now. It's been fun."

"Wait…" Francie, her doe-like eyes watery with sleep and confusion as she stumbled into the tense room, moaned, "What's going on?"

"Reno, I…" Jena stopped, quailing under Reno's dark gaze.

"I'm going to go find better things to read."

And, with that, Reno left, taking with him almost all of their nest egg.

--

Tseng's heart was pounding, his brain was telling him to move, to call out, to do something, anything at all, but he was frozen in place, frozen in the middle of the atrium with a dropped cup of hot tea pooling at his feet. Veld bowed his head, shoved his hands in his pockets, and looked away, his older eyes knowing without looking directly the expression that the young Turk was fighting off, the emotions that were being poorly suppressed.

"Perhaps you should take the day off, Tseng. We can send Rude to fill in for you."

The dark-haired Wutaian shook his head, voice steady although his eyes were slightly unfocused, not really there. "No… it's alright. I didn't think that it could be forever. I mean, we are at war, sir, and my family is part of the enemy. It was business, sir; I understand." Tseng swallowed hard and bent down to pick up his paper cup with unsteady hands. "I'll… I'll be going now. To attend to Rufus. I mean, the Vice President."

Veld watched him go, watched the elevator close behind the stiff form, and sighed heavily. He liked Tseng, but, as the younger man had said, they were at war. Sacrifices had to be made, and nothing—not even family—was sacred in war, least of all one of the enemy race.

--

He didn't know what made him do it. The door to the bathroom had shown light underneath it, and Tseng had just pushed open the door, not thinking, not wanting to think. A startled intake of breath met him, and his attention had been drawn to the naked, tearstained figure huddled up between the right side of the toilet and the wall, blond hair still dripping from a shower and the mako-glow blue marred by despair and hopelessness.

And then, all at once, Tseng had found himself on his knees, himself in tears on the wet floor, his knees tucked into the position he'd always sat in as a boy and his fingers splayed over his own eyes, trying futilely to pull himself together. What was it about Rufus Shinra—damn it, damn him, damn the boy—that made him act this way, that cowed him and brought him down to a human level? Tseng wasn't supposed to be human; he was supposed to be the savior son, the traitorous demon.

"Tseng?"

The Turk looked up at the boy, still rubbing furiously at his eyes and breathing heavily to keep himself from crying out. "Yes, Rufus?"

Rufus stared back at him with a haunted gaze, as if he was seeing something very far away in some distant memory. Tears continued to stream down his cheeks, but he made no sounds and didn't shudder like almost everyone else did.

"My father ordered your family exchanged for an advance on the Wutaian front, didn't he?"

Unexpectantly, a bubble of anger burst inside of Tseng and he had to keep him from lunging at his charge. "You knew?" he bit out, and he felt somehow betrayed.

A moment of silence and then Rufus said, in a desolate, weak tone, "I always know."

Tseng would have gawked if his facial muscles weren't busy being screwed up into a grieving sob. Rufus stood up and pulled a large white towel from the rack after crossing the room, his ribs showing through his back as he reached up to take down the Restore materia from where he'd taken to hiding it behind the high sink basin. Wrapping the towel tightly around his body, the boy came and sat down rather close to Tseng, one hand hugging to towel around him and the other holding the materia like it might serve as a crystal ball.

"So much," Rufus murmured with his eyes dry now but strangely heavy-lidded, "has changed in the past month. I should have… anticipated more than I have. But you have to understand that things do change when lives are meddled with. I'm not a god. I'm not a solution. I'm just Rufus: twelve-years-old and already dead once after watching everyone else die."

Chills were running down Tseng's spine and he was acutely aware at how close they were, how intimate this position would seem an onlooker. "What are you talking about?"

A dark, lifeless chuckle met his question, and the bitter grin that Tseng had come to hate was on his charge's face again. "I used to think I hated my father, but I'm just like him, too. He's won already, and even if he dies, I'll end up the same way."

_I'm just like him_. It was like Tseng was listening to himself just a few years ago. _If I stay here, if I don't do something fast, then I'm going to become my father and that frightens me._

"Do you want to know how your family died?" Rufus didn't wait for Tseng to respond, his eyes once more staring out onto that distant plateau. "My father ordered four Turks sent there along with a group of ten or so foot soldiers. They killed your father first; he fought bravely, taking out at least half of the soldiers before they overwhelmed him. Your mother died next, swiftly, with a sword though the neck."

Tseng shuddered, reaching out a hand and grasping Rufus's shoulder through the towel, part of him wanting to scream at the boy to stop talking such nonsense and other part of him believing every word, reveling in the blunt honesty. He felt Rufus stiffen under his touch but quickly relax into it, a sign of trust, and, oddly, it ripped Tseng's heart out to know the boy felt that pain was a trusting comfort.

"Go on."

"You had two sisters," Rufus continued, his voice distant, almost ethereal; "One of them was older and the other was much younger than you. They killed the youngest first, fast and clean like your mother. Your older sister, though, she wasn't bad-looking and there had been nothing in the orders to say there couldn't be prizes of war. It's estimated that all the remaining soldiers and all the Turks raped her at least once before she died."

Unconsciously, Rufus's eyes had fallen shut and he was leaning into Tseng's touch, a distant contented smile replacing the despair from earlier. Despite the situation, Tseng found he rather liked this version of his charge, which was—although no less mysterious, perhaps more so—younger somehow, simpler. Absently, he instinctively moved his hand from the shoulder and began to stroke at the boy's hair, earning a contented hum that brought a watery smile to the Wutaian's own lips.

The Restore materia was glowing warmly, almost happily, and, as Tseng focused more of his attention on the stroke through Rufus's hair, it cast out a pale, friendly glow. As he watched, the smile on Rufus's lips stretched and eased in a sort of bliss, making Tseng wonder if the boy was really so seriously deprived of loving, gentle touch. Experimentally, the Turk paused, stilling his fingers, and, as he'd predicted, the smile vanished almost instantly, eyes fluttering open in a dazed sort of loss.

"Tseng?" Rufus blinked, coming back to himself. "I'm sorry. I've said too much."

"It's alright." Tseng was surprised to find his voice steady. "I'm glad someone was honest with me, even if I don't know where you got your information from. How about I return the favor somehow? I can help you. I… trust you."

Rufus's eyes slid shut again and the smile that Tseng was beginning to grow fond of returned to his face. "I'm not sure yet. Just… could you do that thing with my hair again for a bit? It felt nice…"

And, for the first time, there was a good silence around them.


	9. Freedom and Order

_Did you hear what he just said?_

In Midgar the season called winter is very cold. Up on the plates, it snows in huge, grey, ash-covered chunks, and the temperature drops often times below zero even with all the industrial things in the city giving off heat. People scurry like ants from door to door, building to building, workplace to home. The homeless or those stuck outside freeze, becoming living and dead testaments to all that is wrong in the city with their ice-coated hair and raw noses.

_Yeah, it's kind of weird…_

When people move away from Midgar, sometimes they can't adjust to the weather outside the city. So long living in extremity and their bodies so used to the stress, they sometimes don't know how to deal with the consistency that comes with more pure nature. For those who move to Midgar, they can never adjust to the extremes, often forfeiting their health and happiness to survive in this savage being of a city.

_I mean, shouldn't the President be saying that, not his son?_

The podium is in the middle of the busy business district above Sector 7, and it is draped with the flags of the Shinra logo and the base of the stage flanked by several guards with masked faces. In the bright lights cast from the large contraptions expertly arranged, the cameras all focus upon the speaker, their many lens panning like the thousands of eyes looking on below, their microphones all giving a slightly metallic ring to the voice.

_Isn't that boy twelve or something? Are kids even able to speak like that?_

He's dressed in a white trench coast with a black turtleneck beneath, his feet booted and white pants partially covered by a strange buttoned long vest. He speaks with sweeping motions, with fluid grace in his emphasis, but his words are anything but gentle. They burn much like his eyes, cold blue rimmed with green, and the words are clear, simple yet eloquent. It's unique not just in his age and his message but in that he doesn't bother to hide himself, doesn't try to play with them like the public is used to their leaders doing.

_He's right, though… Listen to him; he even believes it._

Reporters are already typing away in their offices, journalists scribbling away on their pads, and he's not yet finished talking. The snow smacks his face and the wind batters his coat, but he just slaps the dark slush away, not once pausing in his words of rebellion, of offense, of history. From the young people, cheers are starting up, rough cries of agreement, of shared despair, and the older generation nods slowly, agreeing but reserved, unsure, thinking.

_It's nice to see someone believe in something for once._

The plate might as well drop right now. Things are changing, things have changed, and things will continue changing. It's hard to adapt to Midgar weather—damn near impossible; maybe a new way of living is easier? They're tired of the worsening war, of the rising mako prices, of the endless smoke and ash; it's like living in a crematorium. Women are tiring of their husbands and sons leaving and not coming back; children are tired of listening to their mothers cry.

_Maybe… Just maybe…_

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

8  
_Freedom and Order_

--

In the crowd, there stood a boy with bright red hair, a too-big brown coat that nevertheless kept him warm, and a licorice piece between his fingers and his lips. He had a slightly hallow and haggard look about himself, and the red tattoos beneath his bright eyes gave him a rather troubled look. Standing in the mist of many older adults who paid him little to no attention, he stood out like a sore thumb, his head of flames dancing the icy wind.

Rufus had spotted him immediately; it was hard not to, considering how close the redhead was to the podium and the unusual colouring about him. They had locked eyes a few times, the first surprised but the rest with growing intrigue, and there was no doubt about it. Although the redhead didn't know him, Rufus knew that it was Reno there in the crowd.

"My purpose of appearing before all of you today besides to cause you all freeze a bit more than usual—hopefully not too much so—" This comment was met with laughter, easier than the first few times, "is to speak out about what I think of this war that our men and fathers are involved in."

Above his head, he could hear his father's helicopter hovering now, the ominous groans of the metal battered by the snow and wind. Rufus's heart pounded in his chest and his face, flushed with passion and now the beginning of dread, became more set, more deliberate as did his motions.

"My father fights a worthless, greedy war and wastes the lives of the people upon his and other top officials' ambitions! This is unacceptable and –"

A huge uproar from the crowd cut him off, and he once more turned his eyes to Reno, noticing there was a slight glint in the other boy's eyes now, the licorice stick sticking out of his mouth like the cigarette Rufus was so familiar with. Despite himself, Rufus couldn't suppress the smile that inched onto his lips as the crowd whooped and nodded, although his heart still pounded with the knowledge of what would happen once this was all over.

"No one deserves to die for a selfish cause, for the means of bettering a few choice people. My father—my own father, the President himself—, I am against him on the war. The value of a human life, not matter if Wutaian, SOLDIER, or Turk, is worth more than the corrupt evils of a few souls. And not only does it kill, it raises our mako prices, robs families of their providers, strips children of their childhoods. I know. I've seen it. Families ripped apart, decimated."

His voice, remarkably, even trailed away at that point and he had the sense to look down instead of at Tseng who stood only a few feet away, trying to keep his closest friend anonymous as possible.

"I won't lie." Again there was murmuring. "I won't say that I understand everything. I won't even claim that I have any power. I am young, and, because of my age, I am judged foolish and kept from many of the meetings my father holds. But I know that this kind of death is wrong, that this kind of life is wrong. I… I to some extent live it. I cannot do anything on my own. You, the public, the _people_, you need to stand up. Take a chance. Help me here. I can't be in this alone."

And the murmuring grew to a roar. Rufus looked up, surveying the faces with eyes shut and mouths open, and he sought out the red hair in the crowd to find an observant, pondering face that returned the gaze, a slight nod to the head before the small figure disappeared into the roaring crowd.

Stepping down from the podium with a bow, the Vice President skirted over to the edge of the stage where Tseng was. Once out of the light and eyes of the cameras, some of the confidence and much of the passion slid away as the pounding of the helicopter above grew closer, louder, more intimate and frightening.

"I'm so dead," he said good-humouredly to Tseng although the fear in his eyes betrayed him.

Tseng shook his head, his own face smiling but worry in his eyes. "I don't believe you," he murmured. "Four months we've known each other, and I'm no closer to understanding you than the day I walked in on you making that ridiculous outfit."

"Well, I'm just going to have to keep confusing you," the boy answered infuriatingly and speaking very quickly; "I need you to tell Rude to go to a place called Dragon's Mists and Melts in the slums of this sector –"

"Dragon's Mists and Melts?" Tseng stared incredulously at his charge. "That's a –"

Rufus waved one gloved hand impatiently, glancing quickly around to make sure no cameras or intrusive reporters were following. "I know what kind of place it is," he whispered quickly; "Just tell him to go there and ask one of the keepers for someone named 'Reno', and, when he gets Reno, tell him to give Reno this."

Cramming a small, plain box and a handful of money into Tseng's hand, Rufus turned to the landing helicopter, the last of the confidence and the colour in his face draining away as he boarded it. Tseng had learned to know when he was dismissed, but it didn't stop his heart from wincing when the helicopter jerked roughly on takeoff.

--

Rude spat his coffee all the way from the table in the Turk break room to the opposite wall where it splattered onto the unfriendly metal. Tseng winced and shoved the box he'd gotten from Rufus across the table to Rude as well as the money.

"Dragon's Mists and Melts?" Rude gawked, wiping his mouth. "It's a whorehouse!"

Tseng sighed into his drink, blowing white steam out of the hot liquid. "I know, but that's where he said to go."

"And, you're saying… You actually…" Rude shook his head. "You've got some faith in that kid if you're going this far to help him."

The Wutaian shrugged, not quite responding. It had only been a few weeks ago that Rude had first brought the subject of Tseng's loyalty up. The Turks were bound to Shinra, so it wasn't exactly a bad thing that he was showing such loyalty (alright, blatant preference) to the Shinra heir. However, in the eyes of most Turks and in the eyes of the presidential board, this sort of behavior would be deemed suspicious.

Tseng shrugged again, sipping his tea with a pensive look. "A good a guess as mine…" he sighed; "So are you going to do it?"

"We're Turks, aren't we?" Rude answered, pocketing the goods. "I'm off tonight and you did lend me that egg-puff waffle maker of yours."

"It's not a waffle maker. It's… Oh, nevermind. Thank you, Rude."

Rude got up and was halfway out the door before he stopped, not turning back. There was a moment of silence before:

"Tell the boy to keep talking."

Surprised, Tseng blinked, not sure he'd heard right. "What?"

But Rude was already gone, the door sliding shut behind him.


	10. Lolita

Once more Rufus awoke to find himself on the metal operating table in the labs with Hojo watching and taking notes on the mako drip attached to the beaten body. The drip was actually a new thing, something that Hojo had introduced due to Rufus's growing tolerance of mako and the fact that it had different, smoother effects than thirty-minute shots. It was vaguely aggravating having a needle stuck into one's arm and no less painful than any other mako treatment, but it reduced the need for restraints and gave the scientist something to get excited about while his patient remained unconscious.

"Ah, you're awake," the scientist said, shuffling forwards and peering down at him. "Two minutes faster this time; your enhancement is remarkable."

Rufus, not yet able to speak yet as his jaw hadn't quite healed enough, managed a withering look and a weak flick of his left hand's fingers. Hojo nodded as if more than to himself than to his patient and jotted down notes on his paper, reaching over and adjusting the drip absently.

"It seems the mako is replacing your nutrition at this point. As a doctor, normally I would suggest you eat more, but I'm quite too curious on what mako as food does. You're definitely far more mentally developed than even Sephiroth was at this stage although I'm not sure that has to do with the mako or not."

The more time he spent around Hojo, the more the scientist became both endearing and loathsome. Frankly, Rufus couldn't stand the man, couldn't stand what he knew the man was capable of and had done, but he couldn't say that Hojo was not a good scientist. He was; he just wasn't ethnical. That was what bothered Rufus most of all—Hojo's lack of morals—besides the fact that Rufus himself was now starting to become quite dependent on the scientist's care.

"How much does the mako hurt?"

"Ergh," was all Rufus managed, his jaw and left cheekbone burning with the restorative properties. "Shit."

"Well, at this rate, you'll be fit to return to work in about two hours." Hojo looked distinctly disappointed. "Your father really is a stupid man. Mako always leaves a mark."

"Uhn," Rufus responded in agreement, his right eye twitching spastically in the pain.

"I wish you were my kid," Hojo said absently, shuffling back to the machines.

Silently, Rufus thanked whatever deity there was on the planet (no matter what the Lifestream said or did, he wasn't quite sure even that truly existed) that this was not the case.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

9  
_Lolita_

--

Dragon's Mists and Melts was certainly not a place a twelve-year-old would normally know about. But, Rude thought, considering who Rufus Shinra had as a father, it shouldn't have seemed so strange that the boy had requested that a Turk make contact with a whore. The President had requested much odder and uncomfortable things of the Turks before.

For a brothel, Dragon's was actually a pretty nice establishment; the sheets on the beds were clean and the workers were clean and well-enough mannered. It was also fairly expensive, and Rude himself had only been there a few times with other colleagues, normally the one standing outside and waiting to drive everyone else home. There was a wide range of selection, which, of course, was part of Dragon's appeal, so it attracted many customers and kept its clients happy enough not to complain too much if one fuck didn't go over well.

A tough man met Rude at the door, his arms crossed and effectively blocking most of the entrance. "What do you want here…" Eyes swept over him quickly, "Shinra security employee?"

Rude fished out the gil from his jacket pocket and handed it to the man, who counted it quickly before storing it away in his breast pocket. "I'm looking for someone named 'Reno'."

The man nodded and motioned Rude inside to the lounge. Motioning for him to wait, the bouncer disappeared behind one of the many curtains for a few minutes before coming back out, his breast pocket empty and another person at his side—a boy with fire-red hair and a slight playful smirk to his face. The child wore a black shirt with a splash of red on the front and similarly decorated black pants, but it was the smirk that truly made him stand out.

"Get out here," the bouncer snapped to Rude before returning to his post.

For a moment, Rude stared at the boy, wondering what exactly was going on until Reno reached out, took his hand, and lead him through the curtains. They made their way quickly down the hall and into one of the last rooms decorated in ornate, sensual furniture and beddings. Reno flopped down on the bed, crossed his legs, and smiled coyly up at the older man.

Rude stared. "_You're_ Reno?"

The boy blinked, laughed almost but caught himself. "Yeah," he said in a cocky tone, "I'm him. It ain't like I'm pretendin' to be anyone else. But if you want me to…"

"Wait, wait, no." Rude waved his hands, groping in his pockets and extracting the box. "I was told to give this to you."

A suspicious look came to the boy's face, but he took the box tentatively, still eyeing Rude with apprehension. With quick fingers, he snapped the latch open and extracted a Shinra ID card and a folded sheet of paper, smoothing out the creases in a surprisingly gentle way, alluding unconsciously to his current trade. His eyes flickered over the letter quickly, eagerly, and it shamed the Turk slightly that he'd considered momentarily offering to read the note to the boy.

From between the thin, shapely lips, a small pink tongue darted out in thought and Rude shifted uneasily. The older man had long since come to terms with his own unusual tastes, but this… feeling… was wholly inappropriate. Not professional, not even legal, but this was Dragon's and Dragon's was special in many ways.

"So…" Reno's voice, for someone hardly into his teens, was thoughtful, calculating. "That's the offer."

"Offer?"

"You haven't read this?" Reno asked, looking up with an eyebrow raised. "I thought you was the one coming to do the persuading to make me a Turk."

_Turk?_ "I was just delegated this job by service to a friend from someone higher up. If that's the offer there, then it stands as such."

Reno nodded, slowly, before reclining back onto the cushions on the bed, a vacant look in his eyes. He twisted a lock of red hair in his fingers, an action that made Rude become increasingly uncomfortable, and stared up the ceiling.

"…I didn't want this life," the boy said suddenly, pensively.

Rude shrugged, at a loss for words. "Does anyone?"

"My mother did. She loved it." Reno sat up, nodding to himself. "Take me up to the plate and this job, Turk-man. I ain't got nothing to miss here."

--

_Damn it._

It was raining on the Wutai front. Men sat in their foxholes, breathing like amphibians in the mud, their eyes trained to the scopes of their guns and hearts pounding. Across the atrocious muddy field, they knew the enemy laid in similar wait, breathing just as they breathed and shivering in the wetness, the howling wind.

_Damn it._

Zack wiped a trickle of blood from the side of his mouth and shifted uneasily, his legs brushing against the teen's at his side. Cat-silted eyes stared out over the top, and Zack had long since stopped questioning the Colonel's forgoing of the scope he wore at his belt. The rain drops pelted down on them and Sephiroth's hair was a dirty grey, purposefully dirtied to blend into the battlefield.

_Damn it._

They hadn't had supply shipments reach them for the last two weeks, and the morale was dropping swiftly among the troops. Even Sephiroth had begun to show wear and tear, his lithe, young form slightly on the bony side and a certain sort of tiredness in his glowing eyes. When the dark, heavy nights settled, the wind carried the sounds of men crying, of men praying, of men singing or screaming.

Sephiroth blinked, faster than he normally did, longer than he normally did. The teen was tiring, both their stomachs growling, and Zack found himself sneezing much than usual. The Colonel's cape was wrapped tightly around both their bodies and they shivered together to generate warmth.

Their intercom crackled, the small machine running out of batteries. "Orders to attack at half-past, Squads Four and Five. Colonel Sephiroth, cover with your troops."

Zack resisted the urge to bash his head against his Buster Sword; it would neither him nor his commander any good at all. Sephiroth responded quickly, quietly, relayed the order, and then started to watch the field again, rolling his neck to get out the cricks.

And, for the first time, Zack heard Sephiroth say, so softly but so meaningfully, "_Damn it_."

--

His office smelt distinctly of cleaning products, and his desk was neat—something so odd that, if he hadn't known any better, he would have sworn he'd walked into the wrong room. The leaves of the potted plant in the corner were rather battered, and, Rufus supposed, he should request the plant replaced sometime soon.

Groaning, the boy sank into the leather desk chair, the mako still burning in his veins and the healing not fully finished. It frightened him slightly that he was becoming more and more passive in responses to the pain, but, he supposed, it was just something he'd have to deal with later on once this part of his generally constructed plan was completed.

The plan.

Rufus sighed and stared wearily down at his knees. Four months and counting with a good drink; he had never considered himself an alcoholic, but, the longer he went without his vodka and cognac, the more he found himself thinking about them, dreaming of them even. It was getting to be a distracting obsession, one that included twitches and sweats, nervous energy that he had to work very hard to burn off.

He drummed his fingers on the desktop.

Now that he thought about it, Solomon Shinra was an alcoholic as well. Maybe it ran in the family or something? But his father drank whiskey and gin, crappy stuff, really. Rufus ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head to clear his rampant thoughts.

The plan was going well so far. The speech had gone as he'd hoped and things were playing out as Rufus remembered although he had sped up a few happenings. It seemed that there were certain events that Rufus could not stop from happening; his mother was still missing and Tseng's family had still died. Tseng still had that way of stroking his hair, the way that always turned Rufus into a puddle of proverbial, senseless cooing goo. In fact, Tseng was way better stress relief than vodka had ever been and –

Rufus groaned aloud and resisted the urge to pound his head into the surface of the desk. He wasn't getting any work done this way, and there was no one for him to blame but himself and his emerging hormones. With some horror a couple weeks back he'd realized that, due to his age in this time, he would probably have to go through the entire process of puberty again. Mentally, he was already screwed over enough, but now…

"Rufus-sama?"

Mentally, Rufus screamed in frustration, but, physically, he just remained staring at his knees. In silence, Tseng entered the room, shut the door, and came over to kneel beside his charge in the leather chair. They shared a silent moment, one that Rufus broke, something sinking inside of his gut when Tseng's dark eyes softened into concern, the Turk's long fingers reaching up to tug down the collar of the black turtleneck.

"Tseng…"

The red, puckered skin there had not been healed by the mako as, technically, it wasn't damage that was actually done to the body. It was just an irritation, just a mark, but it hurt the most, made Rufus's chest constrict and his spirit bleed.

Rufus grimaced and pushed away Tseng's hand, smoothing the high collar back over the mark and hiding the others. Against his will, the Vice President knew his face was burning with the shame that seared his soul, knew that there was little he could do now that Tseng knew. The look in the Turk's eyes was enough to cut what little pride Rufus had managed to maintain since returning to this past.

"Rufus-sama…" Tseng's voice was even, but there was fire in the Wutaian eyes. "What is your father doing to you?"

It wasn't true; Rufus wasn't strong. Even as he tried to change the past, it was repeating all around him, no matter what he did. He couldn't change what he wanted to change. Hopelessness was already setting in. The plan was worthless, pointless, if he couldn't even stop his father from doing this to him again.

"Don't." Rufus moved to swat his bodyguard's hand away, but Tseng proceeded and yanked down the collar, the red skin splotches numerous along Rufus's neck line and shoulders. "Tseng, it's nothing. Please…"

Tseng's eyes had narrowed, and he ghosted the tips of his fingers over Rufus's skin, eliciting a shiver from the younger male. "This isn't right," he said venomously; "I know you want to stand up to your father, but if this is the price you're paying –"

The angry words were abruptly caught off. Rufus pressed his lips against Tseng's, silencing him effectively, breathing heavily, and reaching up unconsciously to catch the man's fingers in his small hand.

"Please…"

And time, for once, seemed to stand still.

--

Dedication Note for This Chapter:

To my father

_Even though we don't see eye to eye  
__In politics, economy, or relationships,  
__You are my father and I your daughter  
__And I shall never hate you for that_


	11. The Scarlet Letter

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do! Why don't _you_ come out here and load your friends' bodies onto fucking carts in the fucking rain, huh? What? I don't care! I'll be insubordinate if I bloody want to. You didn't just order men you trained with since childhood to fucking commit suicide! Go die, you damn bastard, go die!"

Zack slammed his communicator down onto the rain-sodden floor of the standard-issue truck and covered his scratched face with his bloody hands. He immediately regretted this as the stench of dead flesh filled his nostrils, and he had to drop his hands quickly and choke back a gag. Next to him, seated in the driver's eat of the motorized cart, was Colonel Sephiroth, the younger man staring dully through his dirty, grimy hair and deliberately not responding to anything—neither Zack's charade earlier nor the bodies crammed in the truck bed behind them.

The truck bumped along and Zack sat back in his seat, sighing and massaging his temples, careful to keep his hands from his eyes and nose. What he would have done at that moment for a shot of morphine and a bottle of something very, very strong…. Beside the SOLDIER First Class, Sephiroth yawned without fully blinking and continued his weary, one-directional stare ahead.

"Tired? I can drive."

"I'm not exactly suicidal." Sephiroth blinked rapidly, unconvincingly. "I'm hungry."

"Well," Zack said bitterly, "we've got a lot of dead meat in the back. We aren't about to starve."

There was a strange silence and Zack could have sworn that he saw one of the teen's silver eyebrows arch behind the grimy, grey mass of hair. The truck swerved in order to avoid driving over several rotting carcasses on the road.

"If that was a joke," Sephiroth said slowly, "it wasn't very funny."

It only took a moment, but, as their macabre truck bounced along back to camp, the two laughed hysterically until Zack cried and Sephiroth had a coughing fit.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

10

_The Scarlet Letter_

--

Night had set long ago on Midgar and most working people had gone home. Tseng, however, had not gone home; no, he wouldn't be going home for a while. He sat, instead, in the dim atrium, a cup of tea in one hand while the other hand stroked absentmindedly at sleeping Rufus Shinra's hair.

He felt, in all means of the expression, that he had been made a fool. It wasn't the boy's fault; no, Tseng had begun to feel more towards his young charge than just friendship since he'd found out about the murder of his family. This, however… He should have known better. He should have stopped the boy from kissing him, stopped himself from constantly wanting to mend all the scars the boy had, stopped emotions from running too freely in this awful time. And how could Tseng be sure the boy wasn't just using him or something?

Rufus stirred and mumbled something incoherent about diamonds and weapons, turning and burying his face into the folds of the Turk's jacket. Small, bony hands reached and curled into the fabric, a contented sigh from the sleeping form bringing an unconscious smile to the Wutaian's lips. It seem only when Rufus slept that the odd older nature slipped away, leaving behind a child for once, almost endearing in his liking of warmth and gentleness. Tseng sighed and resumed stroking the Vice President's hair.

It was kind of funny how things were turning out. He'd hated the thought of having to care for Rufus in the beginning and had complained angrily to Rude and to Reeve, but the more he got to know the boy, the more he found he really did want to care. Tseng wanted to see the boy smile and he wanted to know that Rufus had someone who would wipe away tears that were never shed. In some ways, he even wanted his charge to succeed in whatever secretive plan the boy was sewing because, in many ways, Tseng was still a young man, was still very easily enamored by the idea of revolution and excitement.

There was change and there was hope with this boy lying in his lap. And for an eighteen-year-old quickly becoming wearied by war and personal strife, that was so very appealing.

--

_He was dreaming and, yet, he wasn't._

_The green floated around him, caressing his face, licking his wounds. It was like this now almost every night, and he would float and listen to the voices around him. They murmured, cried out, laughed, and chattered. Sometimes he could see corporal visions flitting through the rippling green, and he thought he saw a young Sephiroth once, sprawled out on a rotten-looking cot, reading what had looked surprisingly like a comic book of some sort._

_Rufus wondered if this was what the Cetra had seen or at least heard. It wasn't wholly unpleasant, but he didn't dare wish that he could hear this in waking life. Sometimes, when he worked with materia, he could feel himself pulling from this green, could feel it wrap like spider webs around his fingers. The gossamer nature of the Lifestream intrigued him, drew him back to visit hopefully in place of his dreams._

_A green ripple had taken a stationary spot nearby. Rufus smiled absently and reached out to pull at the ripples, contorting the smoothness with some amusement flitting over his face. The ripple shuddered and curled around his wrist, tighter, almost like a bracelet, and Rufus grinned wider, plucking at it and eliciting odd sounds a bit like music._

_It was such strange fun to hold the threads of fate in one's hands._

--

Rude had been sixteen when he had joined Shinra and seventeen when he had been induced into the Turks. His parents, loving, peaceful people in a tiny little house on the plate in Sector Five, had been so proud of him; they had thrown him a party and bought their only son a new pair of special sunglasses that would protect his sensitive eyes from the irritating fluorescent lighting so prevalent in the city.

"We want nothing more than your happiness," they'd said.

The bald man knew that he was lucky compared to many of his colleagues and friends. Reeve was estranged from his heritage, Tseng had lost his entire past, and, now, this Reno had been up until a few hours ago been living a life as a pay-by-blow whore. This boy, though, he was…

"What's this do?"

Reno grinned at his companion, pointed up at the large lens on the poorly concealed camera on the ceiling of the train. The boy was an endless stream of questions and seemed severely incapable of sitting still for more than two seconds. Indeed, it brought a smile to the part of Rude that wasn't securely locked away to prevent damage as Reno almost immediately abandoned the camera lens and began to look excitedly out the window of the train car again.

"Look!" he laughed, pointing jubilantly at a lady with a great orange cat in her arms on the street outside. "Don't that look funny?"

Rude reached over unconsciously and brought the boy's hand down. "People are staring, Reno."

Bright eyes darted about, and the bouncing energy he radiated didn't subside one bit. He suddenly crouched low and tilted his head up to look at Rude's face, the excitement in his eyes tinted with inquisitive intelligence.

"Am I really goin' to be a Turk?"

"I guess so. The note is signed by both Veld and the Vice President Shinra."

"My Dad was a Turk," he said smartly, plucking at the worn brown coat he was wearing, "but he was a damn drunk."

He thumbed the tattoos beneath his eyes and gave a small smile. It somewhat surprised Rude how different Reno was from Rufus; Rufus, from what Tseng said and from what contact Rude had had with the boy, was strange, dark, and heavily burdened—like a perverse sort of Atlas with the entire planet on his back. Yet this boy—with his blood-red hair and tattoos, his coarse language and former profession—was truly, in some ways, a child who planned to spend his first paycheck on a chocolate bar.

"My dad, though, he was a great guy," Reno continued philosophically. "Like, he ain't like the other drunks. He put away gil for me, an' he ain't come home to beat me none. When he wasn't passed out and drunk, he was pretty cool. How 'bout you?"

"My father?" Rude asked, surprised despite himself. "He's a good man. He's got a job in the urban maintenance department at Shinra. He lives with my mother above Sector Five."

Reno tucked his arms behind his head, staring up at the grimy ceiling, his legs swinging slowly back and forth. "I was watchin' the Vice President's speech."

"You and rest of the world."

"Do you think…" Reno trailed off and then shook his head. "No, nevermind."

--

Never had he thought it would happen, but Reeve Tuetsi was beginning to highly resent his job.

Money and intelligence—once upon a time, that had been all that Reeve had cared about. He'd shoved his way through school, not caring who he crushed on the way to the top, not caring that his parents slowly were forced to stop loving him for lack of understanding. In school, he'd held teachers in his hands, held upperclassmen beneath his thumb; he had had no real friends, only his intelligence and those who were blind enough to obey him. When he'd joined Shinra, he'd rushed up through the ranks, loosing his virginity to do so. He'd never thought there would come a day when he would begin to regret his actions.

But, as he stood in the atrium on the sixty-first floor at three-thirty in the morning, staring at the completely unconscious forms of Tseng and Rufus Shinra sprawled upon a couch together by the window, Reeve resented his job. His traitorous feet kept him moving towards the pair; his hands clenched at his sides until he was close enough to –

Eyes heavy with mako opened and stared out from Tseng's lap, the blue irises oddly shaped as the pupils dilated too quickly to be normal. Rufus sat up, his eyes glowing in the relative darkness, careful not to disturb the sleeping Turk. The boy showed all the symptoms of over-exposure to mako. Reeve had seen it during his training for the intelligence collection jobs; he'd seen the pictures, heard the stories—incredible magical strength, odd thought patterns, strange happenings.

"Reeve…" Rufus spoke quietly, blinking and straightening. "What are you doing here?"

"I…" Reeve sighed, knowing that, in this state, he didn't want to risk lying to the boy, "need to speak to you and Tseng. It's important."

"Don't wake him." There was a strange look on Rufus's face. "You can tell me."

When Reeve had been seven-years-old there had been a war over mythril. He remembered going to school with his books atop a grenade in a burlap backpack because his father had told him that he could be attacked at any time. His eldest brother, a young man with a clean-shaven face, had died in the first few weeks of combat, and his father had taken to paranoia over his heir's well-being. In school, they had practiced drills to hide from enemy soldiers, had leaned first aid and how to cauterize wounds before lunch was taken. War was nothing new to him.

"Rufus, your father is sending you out to the Wutai front with the next shipment of Turks. Tseng will be going with you along with Rude and the new recruit Reno. You really should wake Tseng up; he's got orders."

"I'm awake, Reeve…" Tseng's voice was low, tired, but his eyes, now open, were alert.

Reeve didn't like war. He didn't like death or the cold nature of his job, but he had thought he could handle it. In a world of green mako like the absinthe fairy and legal whorehouses, morals were something that got a person laughed at, got a person killed. Even the righteous were twisted in some way.

"The president believes that with Tseng's extensive knowledge of Wutai society and ways that he'll be a great asset out there. Rufus, you might want to ask him yourself –"

The boy waved a hand empirically and he gave a bitter smile. "Speak, Reeve. I'm not glass nor am I fire. But don't you dare lie to me."

Once, a very long time ago, Reeve had had a dream, but his dream had died, crushed by napalm and the reality of the world.

"Your father says he wants you out there so that you can gain some experience in diplomatic relations. He didn't say much, but he's also calling Colonel Hidaka back from the front. By default, you'll be filling his seat on the command council until further notice. You'll both be leaving tomorrow at noon."

Oddly enough, Rufus reacted just as Reeve had been expecting the boy to: he laughed. The laugh was on the hysterical side, and the boy reached up run his hand through his blond hair, laughter quickly dying away to chuckles. A concerned look from Tseng to his charge was not missed by Reeve's sharp eyes, the slight shift in both of their positions signaling something else, something not quite right.

"Of course." Rufus shook his head and grinned a cold, horrific grin. "Of course."

And then Rufus tossed his head back and positively howled with laughter. He laughed so hard that he fell off the couch with a _thump_, and he sat back up, a hand on his forehead and his teeth gritted together so that the laughter began strained giggles, much like the kind people made when they were trying to avoid crying. Glowing eyes stared upwards, filled with a bitter mirth, but the laughter was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced by the bitter smile and upward-turned blue-green eyes.

"Can I ask you a question, Reeve? Will you answer me correctly?"

_I'm moving up_, Reeve had foolishly last told his parents, two years ago now. _I know things no one else will ever know. And I'm going to change things! I'm going to make a difference._

"…Yes."

Rufus looked at him with those damn eyes, look at him and seemed so despairing and dead. "Is my mother dead, Reeve? You know. I know you do."

Tseng started to shake his head, his eyes opening in warning. "Reeve –"

_There won't be anymore wars. People like Angie wouldn't have to die. Don't try to tell me that I should stop, that I should do things 'right'. There is no right and there is no wrong—there is only the truth!_

"Yes."

"Was her body burned?"

"…Yes."

"Did you watch the deed carried out and were you promoted for it, Reeve Tuetsi, Lower Head of Urban Development?"

_I won't come home. I won't let you stop me._

"Yes."

Tseng gave him a withering look, but Rufus nodded, closing his eyes as if a great weight had been lifted off his chest at a terrible cost. "Thank you, Reeve. Please tell my father that I'm honoured to have this job placed upon my capable shoulders. You may go."

_I'll hate you forever if you try to stop me._

--

Note: I will be going on vacation from this Sunday, June 25, to July 23 to help my grandparents move. I may or may not be able to update during this time, but I certainly will when I get back. Thank you for reading, and please drop me areview to tell me what you think of this story.


	12. As You Like It

He'd promised Tseng that he would never cut himself again. It had been an unspoken promise, one that they both had understood in that moment—the moment when Rufus had asked Tseng to save his life as the Vice President had bled on that balcony in Costa del Sol. The Turk had been pushing him to get the problem treated for years before that, but Rufus had always been a stubborn lump of a boy when it came to his own health and how he treated his body.

Or, really, he'd always been a lack of a stubborn lump when it came to his body. Rufus, in his short lifespan of twenty-two years, had developed as many addictions as humanly possible; from morphine, which had lasted two weeks until Tseng caught him shooting up in the bathroom and had completely flipped, to alcohol, which was the longest lasting and most prevalent. As far as obsessions went, Rufus had to admit that Tseng was right: he had an unnatural obsession with avoiding food as if it were the plague. Counting the times that the Turk had force-fed him was almost like counting the number of blow-jobs the older man had given him except much less enjoyable.

Rufus didn't know why he was thinking of this as he sat in the bathtub, his twelve-year-old body once more cut up with a letter opener. He watched with detached fascination as the mako in his body—now so much a part of his body—rushed to heal the fine incisions, the flesh knitting together, so much like snakes, like the traitor, _angus in herba_. God, he'd forgotten how good this felt. It was better than being drunk, a hundred times better.

"I'm on top of the world, looking down on creation…"

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

11

_As You Like It_

--

Sensual lips, stained red from a strawberry's juice, gawked at the older man as the boy tried on his first suit.

"_Wutai_?" Reno's voice had a shrill pitch to it, his eyes popping. "We're being sent to Wutai?"

The boy had no training, yet that was what the orders said. Rude shrugged, shook his head, and stared down at the papers in his hands. _Newest Turk squad to be consistent of quantity one crack Reno Kiribani, one jack Rude Hortensio, one specialist Tseng Chak-Wong, and one tactical advisor Rufus Shinra._ Order forms and reports never failed to make Rude feel like an object on a sales rack.

"It doesn't make sense. You have no training…"

"And why is the Vice President being sent with us?" Reno piped up apparently not very worried that he'd been labeled as a crack, a professional thief.

Rude scanned the order papers again, flipping from the front page to the back of the surprisingly thin packet, but found no explanation for that particular question. "I don't know. I don't know why he's labeled as tactical advisor either."

Reno's eyebrows knitted together as he struggled with the tie. "What does a tactical advisor do?"

--

The plane, a bulky, unpleasant thing, hummed loudly along through the smoggy, stagnant air above Midgar, its occupants either staring with varying interest out the windows or looking wearily at papers. Reno had forsaken his tie, much to Rude's chagrin, and was currently intently watching the younger, blond boy who sat across of him, blue eyes rimmed strongly with a green glow, who was looking dully out at the industrial landscape below them. Although the boy was dressed in a black suit with a black turtleneck and looked much smaller than Reno had expected, it was unmistakably Rufus Shinra.

In the newspapers, there had been only ever short blurbs about the Shinra heir except for the one long article published when he was initiated as Vice President. Apparently he'd only ever been educated by the best and had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he was admitted quite pretty for a boy of his age and seemed every bit as promising in his speech earlier that week as some of the most optimistic people had hoped he'd be. But now, as Reno watched, Rufus looked as weary as Reno was beginning to feel, the euphoria of becoming a Turk and being given such an important mission so quickly fading away.

_Tactical advisor, huh?_ The job of a tactical advisor to the Turks from what Rude had said was to map out and plan all attacks, going out with the troops and the Turks to make sure everything was carried out to plan. In a way, it was a bit like being a scout and a planner tied into one except this was a boy, a very important boy, but their orders showed he was to be treated just like any other person on the Wutai front.

"Rufus," the Wutaian Turk, Tseng, spoke quietly into the Vice President's ear, "are you alright?"

Blond hair and pale face nodded. "I've just figuring a few factors, Tseng," he said in a soft, cool voice with a frightening smile. "Just a few factors…"

Abruptly, Rufus's glowing eyes slid shut and his head slumped forward, pretending to have fallen asleep but his hands were clenched, white and angry against the fabric of his suit. Yet his breathing was slow and even almost as if he was drifting between two different planes of consciousness, still able to express emotion yet unaware of what happened in this world.

--

"_Why haven't you killed him yet?"_

_The green had turned unfriendly, angry. Rufus clenched his fists and he spun about in the chorusing voices, eyes wandering and flashing when a ripple or shimmer got too close._

"_I can't."_

_Green flashed and he winced as a shock surged through his body. "Why not?"_

"_He's…" Rufus choked as the green started to become too intense. "I can't…"_

"_Why?"_

_Rufus struggled, bit back tears of frustration. "You ask too much of me." _

_Laughter met his words. The laughter was cruel, biting even, not at all what he would have expected from a chorus of gods and human life controllers. But he didn't voice this feeling; it was too much like salt in an already open wound._

"_You hate him. You _should _jump at a chance to be rid of him again."_

_He would not beg. "The man…Yes, I hate him, but he is still my father…"_

--

President Solomon Shinra was moving down the corridor where his son's now vacant office was located, his footsteps heavy and a line of dark cigar smoke curling out behind him.

Upstairs in his office, the young and up-and-coming Lower Head of Urban Development lay across a couch in the bathroom, eyes glazed and staring without sight up at the ceiling. Once upon a time, Solomon had been a man of morals, who had married a woman that he'd loved and had had a son, vowing that he would do anything to give his boy a better life than he had had. People, he'd always said, didn't start off evil; no one, no matter their deeds, was ever truly evil.

He entered the impersonal office and stared at the neat, clean desk and slightly lopsided potted plant in the corner. In many ways, his son was everything that he was not; his son—in other words, the boy he had named for the colour red, the colour of hope and passion—had natural charisma, a cold demeanor tempered by a capacity for great kindness if he wanted to bestow it upon another. Deep down, as much as Rufus infuriated and frightened his father, Solomon had to admit the boy was worthy of being his son.

Father and son though they were, they were nothing alike. Perhaps that was why he hated the boy so much. It wasn't just the feminine features and the strange way the boy had begun acting recently: it was also that whatever Rufus did ran against his father like oil and water, never mixing, never cooperating. Tracing a hand over the large chair in the room, Solomon looked down at where his son should have been, staring up at him with admiring eyes.

No, Solomon realized, he could never love Rufus but he could never hate the boy truly either. To hate the boy would be like hating his image in the mirror—backwards and wrong but still of his own flesh. It was like young Tuetsi upstairs; there was no feeling, just a need to use, to exploit, to prove that he was still human. But Rufus had stopped screaming, had stopped begging him to stop.

That was why he had sent the boy away. Not because he hated his son, not because he loved his son, but because, now, he feared his son, the son he'd once named in hope of better days.

He wondered if Rufus would come back in a coffin, colour faded, or if the boy would come home red, so very red in such a different way. And somewhere deep down, beneath the layers of hardened politics and business, he already regretted either outcome.

--

_The pain slipped away and the shimmers seemed to stare at him. It was a strange, uncomfortable feeling, much like being a dove in a Skinner box, observed for any behavior changes at all times, not unlike being in a hospital or another sterile place._

"_After all he's done to you, you still care about him."_

_There was a flat tone to this voice, a singular voice. Rufus shifted uneasily, twisting the hem of his black suit. _

"_He's my father. I don't care about him, but I don't want to kill him." _

"_Why?"_

"_I…" Rufus swallowed, the tingling of the Lifestream now streaming at his self-inflicted wounds, knitting together the deeper ones that hadn't healed on their own, "don't want to be like him."_

"_Don't want to be like him?" the voice echoed._

"_I became like him once before. I don't want to kill him and become like him again."_

_Silence and the green began to fade away._

--

They were flying over the ripped land of the Wutai front when Rufus Shinra finally reopened his eyes, eyes that glowed harder and brighter green than before. He turned immediately to Tseng who was looking pointedly anywhere but the windows, where the ruined lands could be compared to his memories of their glory.

"Tseng," the boy spoke in a slow, detached voice, "have you ever killed someone before?"

There was a long moment, almost cold in its shock, but then Tseng blinked and looked down at his young hands. It was a personal question, and, sadly, he was ashamed to answer: "No."

Reno noticed Rude look up sharply at his fellow Turk and then to the slow nodding of their leader and tactical advisor. Rufus leaned back and looked down at the wrecked landscape.

"It's not that bad," the boy said after a moment. "Just don't look too hard that their eyes."

"It's the mouth that bother me," Reno found himself saying rather loudly. "You know, like, the way it twists."

For the first time since they'd communicated silently during the Vice President's speech, the blue-green eyes were on him, a raised eyebrow betraying curiousness. "Who have you killed?"

Reno shifted uneasily. "I ain't proud of it…" he said lamely. "I just do as I do to get by."

Rufus shook his head and leaned forward. "No, I'm just interested. Perhaps we may trade tips."

It was a poor attempt at humour coming from someone so wholly unhumourous, but Reno found himself smiling anyways. It had always helped that Reno had an easy smile.

"I don't think you'd be likin' some of my styles," Reno said philosophically, unaware that everyone on the plane was watching the pair. "I mean, I ain't no great shakes at being subtle. You look like a guy who likes things done pretty."

The tactical advisor shrugged with a certain empirical air about him. "Well, this _is_ a war no matter what my father decides to say. I do prefer something cleaner and dispassionate—sniping and poison, if you please—but I'm going to have to get down and dirty at some point in my life, if not now."

Tseng was watching the conversation, his face working through a set of interesting expressions as if he couldn't quite decide to be horrified or to be intrigued. Rude had a stony look on his face as did their pilot and his co-pilot.

"Most of the time I fucked 'em first, you know, to get their guards down." Reno swung his legs in his seat, looking somewhat despondent. "They're easy to kill after… you know, when they're all limp and weak."

For some odd reason, Rufus Shinra had tilted his head to the side and was regarding him with a thoughtful look on his face. "Ah…" he began slowly, a creepy smile on his face, "I could learn a few things from you."

Around them, machinery hummed, muting the two boy's laughter, muting the underlying fear and disgust between them and fusing together in a strange, certain camaraderie. Tseng and Rude looked at each other, Tseng's eighteen-year-old hand clenched in his lap and Rude's twenty-one years of age lending him no experience to prepare himself for the impending landing.

--

_Executive Order_

Jurisdiction TURK; Class AB Confidential

_… Newest Turk squad to be consistent of quantity one crack Reno Kiribani, one jack Rude Hortensio, one specialist Tseng Chak-Wong, and one tactical advisor Rufus Shinra. To be stationed at frontline sector HA-12 in assistance to SOLDIER Squad OR-014. In the event of casualty … notification to take place only after condition confirmed._


	13. Pandora

Dr. Susanna Hojo, who preferred for obvious reasons to go and be known by his last name only, was having a medical field day.

It was rather frightening, really, to watch the slightly hunched man hop and skip around the laboratory chambers, waving his arms above his head like a child just told that he no longer had to eat all his spinach every night. Technicians and lab assistants were wisely staying out of his way, pretending that they were both deaf and blind as their immediate boss went through a slightly off-kilter victory dance. The last time they had seen him this happy was… well, never.

Hojo ignored the frightened looks; he was quite used to them. Instead he galloped somewhat awkwardly over to his cluttered desk and grinned happily down at the papers on top of the mess, caressing the words lovingly. Two fat files had been yanked hurried out and slapped atop an overturned box of pens and the squashed remains of a paper airplane—one of the few quirks that told people that, yes, Hojo was in fact human. A mug shot of boy with silver hair and a formal portrait picture of a boy with blond hair were clipped to their individual files.

"If I can replicate them…" Hojo rubbed his hands together before doing a complicated flip through the folders. "The Cetra… no need for _that_."

Sephiroth's main defect was that he had a major aggression problem, an almost certain predisposition to mental instability; the Shinra heir's main defect was his naturally weak physical state, inherited from his mother. But they both had such great magical potential, highly intelligent minds, and were very compatible with mako—far more so than any other that Hojo had had the pleasure of testing. With a little bit of genetic tweaking with each… Oh, the thrills that thought sent down the scientist's spine.

It wouldn't be like he hadn't done it before. There was, of course, that Turk—Vincent something or other. Hojo might have been a tad bit more than unethical, but he wasn't an idiot; he did know what he was doing when it came to science. Just a few alternations there, a couple additions here…

Now all he needed as approval and the proper funding, but President Shinra understood anything that had to do with money and possible insanely beneficial gain. It was the problem of the money actually going where it was supposed to go what was holding Hojo back.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

12

_Pandora_

--

There was and never would be anything pleasant about the smell of death. When a body died, everything relaxed, including the muscles controlling the excretory system. Oftentimes, the dead soiled themselves, their bodily waste gushing out from between their legs. Nor upon death does blood stop flowing out of any and all openings possible.

Sephiroth had been trained to do many things in his short lifetime, but preparing bloody bodies of his comrades for shipping back home in boxes wasn't one of them. Zack wasn't any better than him at doing the job; the older teen winced and groaned each time he had to tug ruined clothing off sometimes unrecognizable bodies. They had formed between themselves a sort of silent agreement: Zack did the undressing, Sephiroth the identifying inspection, and together the cleaning.

When the Turk plane landed on some of the few concrete places in the camp, Sephiroth and Zack abandoned the macabre job—Zack wiping his hands on his pants in a vain attempt to look a little bit presentable—and went out to meet their newest additions in the howling rain. Sephiroth was vaguely aware that his hair looked like a tangled willow tree and that they both smelt like they'd been rolling in day-old carcasses (which, in a way, was true), but he couldn't bring himself to care (which was probably a bad sign).

The first person out of the plane was a redheaded kid wearing a suit a size too big for his body, whose sharp eyes swept the area through the rain, focusing on the two-man welcome party. A few steps behind was a tall, bald man wearing sunglasses that Sephiroth recognized as if from a distant past as one of the Turks whom he had sparred against once. Reno and Rude, if Sephiroth remembered the notification forms right; a thief and a physical assassin.

Redhead and Bald were followed a rather gloomy-looking Wutaian man who was looking everywhere but at his surroundings. Sephiroth wondered absently if perhaps he, Tseng, was a captive, a prisoner of war forced into helping Shinra to save his own or someone else's hide. Last out was a frail-looking blond boy that Sephiroth knew from some chance contact in Hojo's laboratory. The Shinra heir's eyes, noticeably mako-treated, swept the area, focused on Sephiroth and Zack, and blinked, betraying for a second an ounce of shocked surprise before becoming frozen again.

Above them lightning flashed and thunder rolled; behind them bodies were rotting in carts. As the rain began to beat harder, Zack was taken by a deep-chested, hacking cough that, when Sephiroth turned to look at his second, caused the dark-haired man to double over, wheezing and coughing up something unpleasant into the mud. He managed a weak smile, but, as he stood back up straight, there was a slight tremble to his hands.

Rufus was the first to reach them and he was about to extend a hand when Sephiroth shook his head warningly. "You don't want either of us to shake you hand."

The heir nodded. "Perhaps we should continue this out of the rain?" he asked not quite inquiringly but not demandingly either.

"Did you bring materia?" Zack asked suddenly and quite loudly; Sephiroth noticed he looked a little glassy-eyed.

"Ignore him for the moment," Sephiroth said, grabbing his sick second and leading them towards the largest tent in the camp besides the medical bay. "Follow me."

--

Upon closer inspection and without the pelting rain in their faces, Tseng noticed that the Colonel and the SOLDIER First Class looked decidedly worse for the wear. The few other people in the room, heads of nearby squads not out on missions nor on scouting duty, had expressions of hopelessness on their faces.

Sephiroth sat down at on one of the cargo crates placed in a circle in the tent, bending behind himself to pick up a hairbrush and a rag of a towel. Everyone else followed suit although Zack seemed to just slump down to lie limply across of his, mako-glowing eyes half-closed. The Turks and Rufus took places on empty boxes apparently placed there just for them.

"Before we start whatever we're supposed to talk about," Sephiroth started as he launched a vicious attack against his dirty, matted hair, "I'm going to be absolutely frank with you lot. We are in deep, deep shit and are in the process of being fucked up the ass with it."

Rufus looked exhausted again, but his eyes remained bright. "I know," he said flatly in an odd, almost clairvoyant tone. "And, yes, we brought some materia. Not much, but we have some."

One of the SOLDIER men piped up, glaring at the Shinra heir. "What do you mean 'just some'?" the man said indignantly. "You're the President's son!"

Rufus shrugged, but Tseng noticed the slight pain on his face. It was the just noticeable shift of his eyes to the bottom left, a painful memory activated; one, Tseng knew, of the many to choose from. Rufus treated the man to his cold, bitter smile.

"Indeed I am." His voice dripped with sarcasm. "But dear old Father and I aren't exactly on, ah, _good_ terms."

The man who had spoken shook his head and sighed, rubbing his stubbled face. "I'm sorry. I was out of line. We're all just stressed and tired."

A general mumbling met this and Tseng noticed that Sephiroth seemed to have become deaf during this uncomfortable conversation. The Colonel was completely occupied by a blood clot in his hair and was using the metal handle of the brush to work away at it, his motions in these moments quite feminine and vaguely reminiscent of Rufus's own handling of his blond hair. In his youth, he remembered studying a few psychology books, but their information gave him no insight to this similarity.

"The state of the front…" Rufus's voice was blank again, dispassionate. "My father wishes for it to be corrected, but my father is often unreasonable. Reno is an accomplished thief and has killing experience, Tseng is of extensive training in various combat arts, and Rude is very well-versed at hand to hand combat. I myself am mostly disposed to materia and long-range rifling. Our orders stand that we are to be applied to existing forces as needed."

Outside thunder crashed; the lights in the tent powered by mako-battery flicked and were quickly beginning to dim. Sephiroth spoke and his voice sounded dull and a tad bit raspy.

"Until we receive new orders from headquarters, we can't delegate any of you to one squad or another." Beside Sephiroth, Zack mumbled and shifted, his eyes closed now, and the silver-haired teen added as if as an afterthought, "If you like, then you could help me with the corpses."

There was a definite hopeful note to the older boy's voice. Zack was snoring loudly atop his crate-seat. The green mako-glow intensified in Rufus's eyes. Tseng cleared this throat.

"I'll help you. I think that the rest of us should turn in for the night."

Outside thunder crashed and the light in the tent flickered off. One of the other commanders reached back and whacked on an emergency light that sent a dull green glow around the room, completely out of habit. Sephiroth was already standing up and was waiting for Tseng to join him.

"There's a tent set up for the four of you a few rows away from here," the Colonel said. "If you kick my second awake, he'll show you all to it. Shall we go… Tseng, is it?"

--

A person can learn a lot about a companion by watching how they organized their space of a shared room. Rude watched the way that Reno threw his bag of belongings underneath the impersonal military cot and immediately set about opening a box of supplies set next to his bed, sorting through the contents without removing anything. It showed a combination of carelessness and meticulous thought on the redhead's part, a living contradiction.

Meanwhile Rufus had set his small bag of belongings down carefully, kneeling on the floor of the tent to unzip the duffle and take out a protectively wrapped shotgun that he placed up next to the military issue pillow on the cot. Next came two elbow-length gloves, the left one with materia fitted into the metal strips along the outer forearm; the small, glowing balls—a fire, a restore paired with an all, and a earth—winked in the lighting. Rufus tend stood up and sat down on the bed, removing his black jacket as he began to pull the gloves on.

Rude sighed and set his own bag down, knowing that it would be useless to question either of the boy's actions. He knew the contents of Reno's bag was mostly clothes and a few personal effects; the electro-mag rod the boy had been issued was already strapped to the redhead's belt. If Rude had had a choice, none of them would be here at all.

"Rude?"

Reno was staring a box in his hands. Rude went over and peered at it.

"Why'd they give us jumpers?"

Rufus had wandered over. "'Jumpers'?" the boy repeated, looking at the box of artificial energy boosters. "They're just for emergency use."

The boy chewed his lip. "I ain't ever gonna use 'em," he said in a pensive tone. "Too many guys get fucked over with this stuff where I come from."

To Rude's further puzzlement, the Vice President shrugged and lifted the box from the boy's hands, shaking it and looking at the date as if deciding something. His gloved hands—gloves, Rude now noticed, that were missing their finger tips—then flipped the box onto his own bed as if it was nothing, not even worth thinking about.

"We can sell them or trade them somewhere," the tactical advisor said before abruptly turning, and sitting down facing one of the corner of the tent, taking a pen out of his pocket and beginning to write on the tent fabric.

Reno and Rude exchanged glances. "Rude," Reno asked in a quiet tone, "ain't you killed someone before?"

There was a long silence and then… "No."

And he could have sworn both boys winced.


	14. The Bluest Eye

_Tseng smells of ash tonight—not like the incense and strong tea he normally does. The Wutaian Turk has come to him at this late hour, dressed in the remains of his dark suit, to lie in his lover's arms. A role reversal, completely shocking and unwelcoming, but Rufus can try. Try to offer the comfort his closest friend so desperately needs tonight, try to offer something only this friend has ever showed him._

_Acid rain pelts the windows of the sixty-second floor, pelts and burns the slums below. Tseng smells like the rain and the fire he's had to stagger through to get here, tastes like salt and charcoal and blood. The blood isn't his; no, the blood isn't even Wutaian. Rufus hugs his bodyguard tighter, wishing, hoping, begging…_

"_Tseng…" he whispers, his heart pounding, "Tseng…"_

_He knows the bodyguard sees them. Eyes. Yes, it's always the eyes that Tseng sees. Eyes that beg, eyes that melt, eyes that cry, eyes that burn—all eyes, all dead. He keeps telling Tseng to _stop looking at the eyes, damn it_, but the Turk does it, does it to punish himself._

"_How can you stand it?" the deep voice asks, tears making tracks down the ash-covered face, down Rufus's soul. "I've seen the way _you_ kill. I've seen the way _you _laugh."_

"_Tseng, it's not the same." Rufus is desperate, frightened. "We all kill differently."_

_Fiercely, the man shakes his head, sitting up and staring with bright, horrible eyes at Rufus. "No, we're not the same." His voice trembles, quivers. "But you…"_

"_I…?"_

"'_Rufus Shinra'. No one has ever seen him bleed or cry." The glint in the dark eyes makes Rufus's skin crawl. "You… you can teach me. Teach me to be like you."_

_Rufus shakes his head and reaches out to Tseng but finds him unreachable. Red sirens roar outside, black rain pelts the buildings, and the shrill wail of one of Hojo's newest experiments echoes through the nearly empty tower. The Wutaian is looking at his eyes._

"_I taught you pleasure. I taught you _love_. Give me this. Teach me to be cold. Teach me to kill and not kill myself."_

"_No."_

_Tseng reaches out to him, grabs his shirt, forces their mouths together so that their tongues do a fierce battle. Rufus pushes against the stronger man's chest, his heart pounding and no pleasure, no happiness in the contact. No, no. Rufus is screaming inside. No, Tseng, I don't want this; you don't want this. Not like this. Please._

_And there are other memories as Tseng grabs Rufus's hands, locks them behind the boy's back, memories long buried, happily forgotten. Another hot tongue, meaty hands, blunt, greedy teeth; and Rufus cries out._

"_Stop!" He bites his own tongue, blood slipping into the Turk's mouth. "Please, no…"_

_But Tseng isn't there. Not tonight. No, tonight there are only memories of eyes and blood, only desperation and pure anger. Clothing, carelessly ripped, hard, pressing bodies—no, no, no!_

_He can't even scream._

_And for the first time Rufus fears Tseng. But, damn it, damn it all! He doesn't cry, doesn't scream, not even when Tseng enters him unannounced._

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

13

_The Bluest Eye_

--

He walked through the rain, let the water soak through his clothes, let the mud slop over the military-issue boots. The camp smelt of death and of things left undone, but he wandered through it, listening to the nightmares of men in their tents, heading towards the edge of camp where he knew Wutaian forces lay in wait.

Rufus Shinra was beginning to recognize his depression, his hopelessness. The box of jumpers in a little plastic bag swung limply in his grasp and he kept it out in front of himself, watching with his mako'd eyes the flitting movements of the Wutaian soldiers. They were watching him, watching a boy. Rufus was really beginning to hate this body of his.

Slowly, unthreateningly, he lifted the box in his grasp, shook it. A beat and then one of the Wutaian ninja stepped out of the dark, watching, careful. Rufus walked forward two paces and set the artificial energy boosts on the muddy ground, watching as the ninja glanced back and forth to his comrades before approaching slowly.

"What do you want?" the voice—female—asked, heavily accented.

There was a long silence and Rufus tugged back his shirt sleeves, exposing his gloves and materia. Instantly there was a shifting of positions, wary and warning if he was to try anything.

"I have a message for Lord Gordo."

"Be quick about it."

Rufus reached up, threaded his fingers through his soaked hair. "The Leviathan will not fall but will be strengthened. This is all a farce."

A silence and then: "Proof."

Rufus pointed to the box and the Wutaian ninja took it with a quick snap before disappearing into the trees.

_Lord Gordo, you'll know my name._ Rufus's fingers were still stained in the ink he'd used to write in hesitant Wutaian. _There is an alliance to be made._

--

The Lifestream was angry.

Rufus knew this immediately by watching the way that Colonel Sephiroth repeatedly shook his head with each lightning flash. The silver-haired teen looked positively miserable, his cat-like eyes in small slits as he paced the meeting tent. Rufus's own stomach did flip-flops at the next crash of thunder and he nearly lost what little breakfast he'd taken all over the canvas floor.

Damn mako, damn Lifestream, damn dying in the first place…

"I hate this fuckin' place!"

Reno had stormed in, his hair messier than usual and his new Turk suit in complete disarray. He threw himself onto one of the empty boxes and stared accusingly at Rufus.

"You!"

With a dramatic sigh and a cross look, Rufus glared at the older teen. "What?"

"Ain't something gonna happen soon or are we just gonna sit 'round and wait for them to attack us?"

If possible the Colonel looked further exasperated and Rufus felt his stomach turn unpleasantly, had to choke back bile. Oh, some things never changed. Reno remained as infuriating as always at least, and it was comforting as it was annoying.

"Actually, yes." Zack looked a great deal better than he had the day before; Tseng was still asleep in the tent, his pillow over his face. "We suffer two times more damage if we take the initial offensive."

Sephiroth mumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like a slight at someone's intelligence and, in this moment of distraction, stalked straight into a stack of boxes and knocking them over even as he let out a slew of curses. Lightning cracked outside and Sephiroth let out a cry, his head jerking back reflexively on his neck as the mako and Jenova cells in him exploded in reaction to the anger in the Lifestream. To Rufus's continuing humiliation, the Vice President lost his breakfast onto the canvas floor with a choked retch.

Reno glanced back and forth between his two bosses, not quite sure what was going on but quite sure that it wasn't good. If Rufus had had the energy, he would have prematurely ordered Reno silent, but he found he didn't need to.

"…You feel it, too?"

Never in Rufus's life (past or… future-past; he was still getting used to that) had he thought that Sephiroth could be even remotely friendly. It took a great deal of effort on the young Shinra's part not to openly gape at the tall SOLDIER, and Rufus's mako-addled brain whirred in overdrive to produce a singular-word answer.

"Yes."

What looked frighteningly like a bit of a smile came to Sephiroth's face. "So I'm not crazy. You can hear the voices, too."

Lightning flashed and Rufus felt like he'd like very much to die, thanks much. "…Yes."

Sephiroth smiled and his cat-like eyes turned upward as if to a god or holy entity. "I'm not crazy," he said aloud as if marveling at the idea. "I'm not crazy…"

And, for reasons Rufus really couldn't care enough to fathom, the Lifestream became angrier.

--

The woman in the doorway dropped the vase she was carrying when she saw the young man that her husband was standing in silence staring at. Her long, dark hair, pulled back in a tight knot from her strong-boned face, was flecked heavily with grey, but she moved quickly on her old feet, passing her husband to reach her son.

"Reeve, you've come…" she stopped and bit back a small gasp. "What's wrong?"

There was a clear shadow to Reeve's face, a dead look about his eyes and none of the old fire shining in their depths. His posture was that of a defeated and severely beaten man, the shredded state of his soul fully apparent. He stood there and looked at the ground in front of his father's feet. In the yard, their eldest daughter's grandchildren were whispering about their uncle, the one they'd been told never to turn out like.

Quickly, Argus Tuetsi stepped forward, his temper flaring. "Answer your mother when she speaks to you, boy."

Reeve cringed and the shadow deepened into his face. "Can I…" His voice was hoarse, gravely, like he'd been drinking. "Can I come in?"

For a moment, Argus glared at his son, but the glare was a lot less harsh. Sarah felt something within her chest ease.

"Get inside, boy."

And Reeve obeyed.

--

Reeve sat at the old table, clutching the warm mug of cranberry tea in his hands that he only noticed now looked extremely bony and thin. His mother was already fussing over him, bringing out nourishments that Reeve found he had no appetite for anymore. He stared dully at the red liquid in his hands and deliberately did not look at his father.

"Why have you come back here, Lower Head of Urban Development?"

"Father, I –"

Argus stood up abruptly, shaking the table and knocking over his chair. Reeve winced and felt the man lift his face, but he continued to advert his eyes, looking instead to the side as the vice grip on his chin tightened.

"Look at me, boy." When Reeve didn't obey, he received a sharp shake that jarred his entire body. "Look at me."

He had forgotten how much his father and he looked alike. Angie, named Argus—his father's namesake and first-born son—, had had their mother's thick hair while Reeve's and his father's were more coarse. Their facial structures were nearly identical, like sharply carved stone, and they both had dark, searching eyes, made perfectly for the death glare that neither liked to give or receive.

"Why did you come home?"

The old clock sat ticking in the corner, the giant pendulum swinging back and forth as it every day since Reeve had been born and before even that. It was one of the few things that the Tuetsi family had been able to take with them when they'd fled from their original homestead in the mountains, and it had been no easy task to truck that thing around on the chocobo cart that had held the family and their few belongings. That had been generations ago now, but the story was still fresh in so many ways.

"…I had a week of leave." The hand left his face but he remained staring up at his father. "I'm sorry, Father."

Softly, the big man let out a whistle of amazed sadness. "I never thought I'd hear _that_ out of you."

"…I've had to kill people to get where I am." Reeve recoiled from the expression that crossed his father's face. "Orders, I was just following orders like Angie, but…"

"Angie is dead." Venomous, cold.

"I've seen things, Father. Terrible and wonderful things." Reeve's words came out now in a rush and his hands clenched against his knees. "I needed to ask you, I couldn't stop myself, I'm sorry… Please, Father, it's important."

The older man sighed at his babbling son. "What do you need my opinion on, Reeve? You only ever asked me questions for that reason."

He told his father first about the mysterious behavior of the President's boy, the noted change in the boy's behavior and intelligence. He spoke of the rumours flying around the Shinra building about how Hojo and Rufus had forged some sort of alliance—that it was thought that Rufus was working for some sort of rebellion. Reeve spoke of the few times that he'd met the boy, seen the odd laughter and the way he seemed to be able to curl anyone within arms reach around his fingers like they were all just puppets awaiting a proper master.

Then he talked about the young, silver-haired Colonel who had been brought up under the eyes of Shinra just like Rufus, had been treated extensively with mako until no longer could he be separated from the substance. He told his father the stories of the broken bones and the fits of unexplainable power and illness that plagued the Colonel with the weather and his mood. In a way, Reeve found he'd begun to think of the two as twin enigmas, connected somehow through Hojo or something else.

Something… "Unworldly?" Argus supplied.

Reeve sighed and shook his head, ironically mirroring his father's earlier action. "I don't know. I think I might be reading too much into it."

Argus shrugged and reached over to pour his son more tea. "The Tuetsi family has long been known for certain intuitive abilities when it comes to playing fortune teller and drawing connections between people, Reeve. You know very well that you have a talent in that what with the way you used to breed those cats."

"…I'm not going to breed the Colonel and the Vice President, Father. That's just wrong."

The old man slapped the table and hooted good-naturedly. "There's my boy!" Argus crowed almost as if the past few years had never happened. "Always the serious one."


	15. Les Miserables

Rufus Shinra had distant memories from the very early years of his childhood of a white-walled room with strange toys, crayons, and paper. He'd never liked the toys very much because when he'd played with them, he'd always gotten a strange feeling that he was being watched, analyzed, and calculated. Instead, he'd draw pictures on the paper with the crayons, always in sure, curved, lines. His favorite objects to draw had been large chocobo herds, all full of life, all happy.

He had always been unusually talented at drawing. In the white room, in the silence, he'd sketched his earliest years away pleasurably, and, by the time he'd been seven, the white-walled room had become like his sanctuary, full of his drawings. Even after Meteor, Rufus had continued to draw his chocobo herds with—as Elena had put it once—disturbing lifelikeness. He knew that those pictures had been taken and analyzed in his youth, his actions in the white room carefully gone over to assess his intelligence, his personality, any possible power.

It was one of the few things that his father had ever recognized him for; Rufus knew for a fact that the old man had carried around a folded square of one of Rufus's chocobo drawings. He'd made it for his father when he had been five and still delusional that his father might love him, and he'd drawn a big red "Daddy" chocobo with a little gold chocobo alone on a grassy field together in pleasant companionship. Secretly, deep down inside, he knew that picture must have touched his father's cold heart in some way, showing Rufus many years later when the coroner had given Rufus the deceased president's wallet that the man had still been human.

He'd kept that picture all those years. Cold, cruel Solomon Shinra, who had never given his son a compliment and had added blood to bitter tears, had kept that little bit of childish hope close to his money and his heart even when there was no love left between them. Rufus had cried when he'd found the heavily creased, folded square behind his father's ID, sobbed uncontrollably in the bathroom of the hospital's mortuary level.

_Why?_ He'd wanted to scream, to tear up the picture, to run back to the table where his father's body was laid out, to shake the man awake from death. _You hated me! I hated you! Why did you keep this, this stupid dream? Why, why?_

But he'd known why. Deep down inside, beneath all the layers of fat and greed, Solomon had loved his son, loved him so deeply that he had unconsciously formulated a plan to hate the boy, to prepare his son of the reality of the crude, hateful world where chocobos were more often slaughtered for fun than left in beauty in the wild to flourish. If Rufus had had the ability, he would have screamed then, but all those years of well-meant but cruel training had made him silent.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

14

_Les Misérables _

--

_Don't fool yourself, Zack,_ the dark-haired SOLDIER thought miserably as he stared at his companion; _Sephiroth will never see you like that._

Against all laws of the universe it seemed, the genius Colonel always slept with is mouth wide open but without a single sound save even, slow breathing. Indeed, Zack knew his fascination with the Colonel was probably a stress reaction, one born from extreme deprivation of normal human contact and the fact the two spent almost all their time together, squished against each other in muddy foxholes.

Plus, ever since the Shinra heir had come here, the two had forged a sort of understanding that Zack had not been able to obtain after working alongside Sephiroth for nearly two years. It didn't help, really, that the heir had such a feminine sort of beauty not wholly unlike the kind that the Colonel gave off. From whispers in the ranks, it was a poorly kept secret that Zack had competition—not all friendly—for Sephiroth's attention, and the Colonel's second had heard the young Shinra's name mentioned a few times since the boy's arrival as well.

Oddly enough, he noticed that the Turk called Tseng got extremely tight looks on his face when he heard these mumbled conversations floating around at meals. For the last week, the two had been in almost constant companionship when not attending to their charges because of their shared duties in the mortuary, and they had taken to sharing meals together while Sephiroth and Rufus spoke cryptically about everything from mystic theology to the finer points of hair care with the limited resources available (the later topic remained hopelessly lost to Zack and, the SOLDIER suspected, to Tseng as well).

"The dirt comes out easily enough," Sephiroth was complaining over their unappetizing mush called breakfast, "but you wouldn't believe how long it takes to get plant roots out of this hair of mine."

Rufus moved the mush around with his spoon, not eating a bit of it and grimacing in a regal way when a bubble popped atop the jelly-like liquid. "At least your hair isn't as thick as mine. I mean, when my hair gets covered in something, it makes me look like I'm wearing a bloody huge pillow on my head."

Reno snorted on his spoonful of mush and interrupted Sephiroth's response. "Some of the gals I know have this recipe with lemon juice and some other shit that always got various crap outta their hair," he contributed, turning two pairs of mako-infused eyes full attention to him. "And some of that stuff was real nasty shit."

The three older men at the table exchanged looks as their younger colleagues launched into a long conversation about home remedies for hair trouble. Rude, who was bald, watched the conversation like he was watching some sort of three-way tennis match, his eyes darting back and forth as Reno whipped out a pen from his pocket, scrawling out the ingredients for his magical hair tonic.

Zack looked away to the many other faces in the large tent. There were men bent over bowls of barely digestible mush, men ignoring their mush, men asleep in their mush. The men had hungry eyes, wicked eyes, empty eyes; Zack didn't fear them, but, instead, he feared the Hell he saw brewing in all of them.

"Zack."

The SOLDIER turned quickly to the sound of Sephiroth's voice calling him and was met by a dark look in the boy's eyes. His slitted pupils were dilated and that was enough to make Zack's hair stand on end. Rufus was already standing, the Turk's tactical advisor tightening the straps of the gloves he wore. The Colonel held a battered PHS between his forefinger and thumb, confirming Zack's suspicions.

"Squads 8 and 32, move out!"

--

It wouldn't have taken a genius to realize that Shinra's forces were so fucked that it wasn't even funny.

Rufus Shinra, stationed in the middle of the probable battlefield, could only estimate what battle this was, but—from the looks of the troop size—it would be the battle that would promote Sephiroth to his position of General. Compared to dying, the anticipation of attack was definitely worse; never had Rufus thought his heart could pound this hard and fast without exploding.

Tseng hadn't stopped whispering prayers under his breath since they'd come out here to flatten themselves into pre-dug foxholes. As much as Rufus tried, he couldn't help but be slightly irritated by the constant buzzing hum of words muttered too fast and too low for the Midgar-born youth to understand.

_My message hasn't reached Gordo yet. Please reach him. Please._

This wasn't part of the original history. Sephiroth was supposed to be sixteen when this battle occurred; Rufus was supposed to be seated behind a metal desk, listening to the reports coming in from the front. At this moment, Rufus Shinra hated the Lifestream so much he could practically feel his blood pressure exploding.

"Tactical advisor and special, what's your status?"

The PHS buzzed angrily when neither of them answered it the first time around. Irritated, Tseng broke off his prayers and opened the connection. Rufus, wisely, decided against snapping at Tseng for this perfectly acceptable action.

"We're still waiting. The party in the East hasn't moved yet."

And they waited, hearts pounding, for that movement to occur.

--

A bad dream: that was all it was. Reno had not just put his electro-mag rod right through a young man's left eye; he hadn't just seen Rufus shoot a woman through the neck, the sole person of the five-person group to survive long enough to get within sword's distance of the Shinra heir. Rude was smashing someone's head in; Reno could hear the bones cracking in back of him as the boy raised his rod to strike out again.

The mud that had been made by water was now saturated with blood. Time whirred about and the sun shined like a looming monkey, the screeches of birds like death calls in the flashes of magic and splashes of flesh. The next time that Reno was able to look for Rufus, the tactical advisor's eyes had been completely encased by green glow and the Wutaian Turk Tseng raced around nearby using a stolen weapon to slash down those who were stumbling in the masses of dead and dying.

It stunk, the battlefield, stuck of blood, human, waste, burnt flesh. Screams… Well, Reno knew he'd never sleep another night without thinking of these screams. They weren't the same as the howls the men would give from the whore beds; they were shocked but in a different, more agonized way.

"Aaah!"

Mastering materia in the middle of a battle was always a messy job, and the scream that Rufus made ripped over those of the dying momentarily, a blood-curdling shriek of unexpected exertion and pain. Unexpectantly, the earth around a particularly large Wutaian soldier heading towards Reno and Rude imploded upon itself and cracked legs then spine as it convulsed. Rufus, who continued to scream and shoot off spells without concentration, without target, was completely glowing in the green now, his gun dropped at his feet.

Reno knew he was going crazy. There was no more strategy to this, no more targeting as he swung his rod about in looping arcs. Off in the distance, the Colonel's huge sword was soaring, Zack's wide metal cleaver howling down with each swing. Wutaian and SOLDIER fell around him, like stones, like rain. Mud squished; flesh squelched.

A bad dream: that was all it was.

--

"_Dear, wake up."_

Where am I?

_The grass tickles at his feet and the sun is pleasant in the sparsely clouded sky. Flowers sprout up around the rocks, interlace with the tall grass._

"_There's my good Ruf'."_

Mother?

_There's colour to her cheeks, a slight pinkness so unlike he's used to seeing in her. She's not a thin as he remembers; a healthy layer of muscle covers her bones, fills out her skin. Birds flutter by across the sky overhead, and the wind is cool but not cold, warm but not hot._

"_Hey, baby." She bends down, brushes away his bangs, and kisses his cheek. "You're looking so handsome today."_

Mother…_ He whispers and feels himself smile. _I'm delirious.

_He feels his corporal body being taxed beyond its limits, feels his spiritual body in this realm becoming pleasantly sleepy. His mother smiles lazily down at him, but he clings to the delusion that his brain has drawn up for him._

Mother, I've killed so many people today…

"_Are you taking care of yourself?"_

Mother, I tried to die again today… It didn't work.

"_Well, you need to grow up strong, you know, or your father's going to be mad."_

Why?

_But his mother simply smiles and strokes his hair, not noticing that she's fading away into the dulling scenery. Rufus doesn't even bother to try and hold onto the dream._

--

He was crawling, dragging his right leg behind him, the limb twisted oddly below the knee. Long hair trailed in the mud and he stopped to catch his breath, to concentrate on easing the pain.

"Tseng…"

The voice was so small, so weak that he barely recognized it. He turned towards the sound of his name to the small, huddled figure a few feet to his right that was sitting with knees pulled up to chest. Rufus's skin was covered in burns that glowed an eerie green, and the fabric of his gloves was in tatters, his skin raw and red where the black fabric had been. Still, the boy looked sane enough, tired but sane, perhaps more sane than Tseng had seen him be in a long time.

"You're…" Rufus inched forward through the muck and crouched beside his bodyguard, bloody, shredded hands reaching out to touch Tseng's twisted leg, "hurt."

He felt the tingling of magic before he registered what his charge was doing. Tseng reached out and clutched at Rufus's torn dress shirt, threaded his own damaged skin in the warm of the younger one's.

"Don't…"

Oddly, though, this only earned Tseng a strange, happy smile as the blue eyes became engulfed in green, and the Wutaian Turk felt his leg twist itself back into a proper position. Slowly the pain slid away, leaving Tseng feeling exhausted and more than a little relived when the glow in his charge's eyes faded and felt behind a slightly hazy, pleased look on the thin, blood-splattered face.

For a moment, they stared at each other, tired, worn, and still somewhat in pain. Around them, the dead and dying lay in putrid stench; moans and groans harmonized in a grotesque orchestra. The carts weren't set to come for several hours more and neither had the energy to get up and wander like drunks back to camp. Still looking hazy and happy, the Shinra heir slumped, slumped forward, and pressed chapped lips against bloody, cut ones.

The kiss tasted like salt and it took Tseng a moment to realize that Rufus was crying. For some odd reason, this disturbed him more than the fact the twelve-year-old was currently exploring the interior of Tseng's mouth with his tongue, torn hands grasping hungrily, needingly, at the fabric of Tseng's dark jacket. Salt, yes, and he tasted of something else, something earthy and burning.

Tseng groaned and kissed back suddenly—just as desperate as Rufus for human contact, for human love, even if it was a sham, a joke, a stress reaction. Against his lips he felt the boy shudder, felt his own tears mingle with Rufus's in their mouths. They grabbed at each other's torn, battered clothes and bodies, gasping between kisses, grasping at each other as if they were each other's only lifeline. There was no lust, no real feeling, but they both knew that sex wasn't needed; in those few moments and kisses, they bonded more than they would have in a decade.

The sun was gone and the moon was out, a cold wind sweeping the desecrated plain. Together they lay in the unspeakable stew of dirt and death for that night, kissing absently yet attentively, Tseng sobbing occasionally and Rufus drifting in an out of a green-eyed sleep. The macabre symphony hummed, shrieked, and neither truly slept, only safe in their own minds and their shared embrace as they waited, waited, for a new dawn.

--

_The brave do not fear the grave. – Battle Arena Floor_

_I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt_


	16. Civilization and Its Discontents

When he had been eighteen, Rufus Shinra had reached the end of his rope.

Costa del Sol had been awashed with debris from a storm and many of the people he normally saw were out on clean-up crews that he wasn't allowed by his father or company policy to join. The people hadn't blamed him; indeed, he had always gotten the impression that the people of Costa del Sol rather liked him. Somehow that had made his low spirits worse, and he'd lived in his hotel room, not eating, for several days as he watched their efforts of the balcony of his suite, a glass of vodka his constant companion.

In truth, he had known even then in the depths of one of his worst depressions that his way of thinking and his view of the world were unnatural, narrow. The parties his father threw, the numerous women he slept with, the warm caress of never-ending money: it was a teenager's dream but it all felt heavy, uninviting to him. All the days since months ago had all seemed to become rolled together; he couldn't remember clearly what he'd done the hour before let alone a week ago. The image in the mirror was warped and only blood was real, was human, anymore.

He hadn't tasted anything sweet in months even though all he ate was candies and chocolate when he did eat. Sugar-laden things were the only things that just tasted like nothing most of the time and not like bones' ash, that awful, herbal medicine that Tseng had once given him. Bitter things—vodka was his favorite—gave ill-comfort to his appetiteless stomach.

He wasn't sure—probably never would be—what made him finally reach for the knife. Maybe it was because it had been pretty, clean and glistening, washed in a sparkling polish. Maybe it was because Tseng just told him that his father was ordering Rufus back to Midgar early. Or maybe it was because he had been just so tired, so bloody tired of hating himself. It didn't matter, really; he had reached for the knife, rolled up his sleeves to expose scarred, thin forearms, and poised the knife at his elbow before slashing downward towards the underside of his wrist.

And it had hurt. He'd expected it to; he'd had no romantic notions about death, not when he'd taken so many different lives on his own. The blood, red, satanic liquid, had splattered down upon the white of his coat, his vest, his pants, and he'd trembled at the sudden warmth.

_But I'm always cold, _he'd thought absurdly as the blood soaked through the fabric; _why is my blood warm?_

The air had suddenly seemed colder, the world darker, and he could smell the sea, hear the sounds of people down on the beach. Strange that such clarity could only come from dying, he'd thought then. Was this what the world was like to others, like Tseng, who had always told him that there was light on the Planet, good among the bad? The air had tasted cool and calming, slightly salty in the sea breeze, not like ash, not like death and rot.

He hadn't been able to do it, to slash his left arm. As his brain sent out all those chemicals that it normally withheld from Rufus, the world had refocused and tasted and smelled. Suddenly, Rufus had been human.

"Rufus-sama!" Tseng's voice had seemed louder, clearer, and he'd felt the strong arms wrap around him, the scent of foreign incense filling Rufus's senses as his bodyguard yanked the knife from his right hand. "Oh, Leviathan…"

Absurdly, Rufus had whispered then, "Don't, Tseng. I'm not a god," as tears began to make their way from his eyes.

"It's alright, Rufus…" Tseng had whispered back, yanking a Restore from his pocket and slotting it into a holster than he kept around just in case; "It's alright."

And, absurdly, he'd believed just for a few moments and he sobbed soundlessly in the warm, scented air, waves crashing below, that it was really alright.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

15

_Civilization and Its Discontents_

--

The mess hall is nearly empty.

Sephiroth sat at the table where normally Zack and lately the Turk shipment had inhabited, a package open in front of him on the table and a silver lock of hair twisted in his fingers. The only other person at the table was Reno, his eyes staring blankly at the wall opposite of them, unfocused, unseeing.

"Congratulations, General."

The sun was coming up. The two stood up on shaky legs and went out to drive the carts to see what and who could be salvaged.

--

They found Rude unconscious but breathing beneath a mutilated corpse that was neither clearly Wutaian nor Midgarian. A few bodies later, they'd found Tseng and Rufus, Tseng asleep and Rufus awake, his eyes glowing and his materia all in highly reactive states. Zack had appeared several more yards off, staggering among the bodies and dropped weapons, clutching at his buster sword as if it was a lifeline.

_Have you ever heard the crunch of bone beneath a car's wheels?_

Wutaian troops had appeared as well to look for their own companions, and no one said anything as they moved about the bodies together, turning over corpses and soon-to-be dead, touching, feeling, robbing.

_This is a war; why ain't you got your will out yet?_

Rufus walked among this strange, mixed brigade, his shredded gloves in hand as he moved from body to body. It was a strange sensation, really, this sort of distance, this sort of removal from reality. There were bodies without faces, missing limbs and stripped naked, yet he felt nothing, knew nothing to care about the splatters on the ground.

_It's like drinking the blood of Christ from the mouth of a rabbit._

Feeling nothing… Rufus could have laughed if the situation wasn't quite so bitter. Sure, yes, they had won; Shinra's SOLDIER had conquered. He highly doubted that his letter to Lord Gordo would ever earn anything now of political or social worth on his part. Again the surrender of Wutai would occur, again Sephiroth had been promoted, and again would he be called back to direct the Turks in his father's oppressive operations.

…_I don't like this._

"Rufus."

_Is it possible that I could run from this scene and forget it all?_

Sephiroth looked tired. That surprised Rufus slightly; it seemed impossible for such a person to show human exhaustion. But here the newly minted General was with a dull expression in his cat-like eyes and his body seated atop a wagon with now overflowing bed of the recognizable dead.

"I've got to take these back to camp and get them ready for transport back to Midgar. Would you take care of the clean up of those that can't be eye-deed?"

Rufus shrugged his ragged shoulders. "I know the routine. I'll just wait for the Wutaians to get what they need; it was part of the ceasefire agreement."

The General nodded and shifted slightly so that Rude's unconscious body leaned a bit more comfortably on his right shoulder plate. Tseng was curled up on the floor next to Sephiroth's feet and Zack sat staring out from the back of the truck bed, his eyes glassy as he absentmindedly pushed limbs hanging over the sides back into the pile he was leaning against. Somewhere someone was crying loudly across the field. It was a male voice.

"Hey, Rufus?"

The General's voice was soft and pleasant, and Rufus turned his attention back to the older boy, to the glowing green that was reflected in both their eyes.

"Yes?"

"…What is Hojo like to you?"

Rufus blinked. "To me?"

Silver hair shifted and rippled as the SOLDIER nodded. "I've seen you, you know, when your father brings you in. I mean, when I'm in Midgar, I do live in the lab most of the time, but that doesn't mean that I'm dead to the world around me. Your screams make a nice contrast to those of the experiments."

"Thanks…?" Rufus wasn't entirely certain what to say. "Hojo and I… well, we didn't used to get along. Before coming out here, though, my father and I had been at each other's throats more than usual and I started to become conscious much more often during the mako treatments. He… talked to me."

"About what?"

Sephiroth looked suddenly hungry, eager. Rufus shifted uneasily and began to haphazardly tie his materia back onto his forearm with the shreds of fabric from his jacket.

"Not really all that much. We talked about materia, he muttered a lot about experimenting on me, and I got shot up with mako. He was…" Rufus frowned, suddenly puzzled, "nice to me."

It seemed that Sephiroth had forgotten everything but the conversation, and he was leaning towards Rufus, eating up every word that came out of the Shinra heir's mouth. The sun was becoming high and the stench was beginning to change, change from waste to rot. Rude's head had slipped down to Sephiroth's hip; Rufus wondered if Rude drooled and if Sephiroth would notice.

"Nice? What's he like when he's nice?"

"He's not." Rufus looked away. "He's the same as always. But he's nicer than a lot of people are… I mean, at least he's honest, right?"

Sephiroth was quiet for a moment and then he whispered, almost to himself as he looked out at the devastation around them, "I suppose so."

The wagon made crunching sounds as it went over bodies on the way back to camp. Rufus looked out and clutched his materia, readying for the task that he had been charged with completing.

_Return to the earth by way of fire… it's the most humane way._

--

Reeve Tuetsi had woken over half and hour ago in the room of his youth, but he had not yet moved to get up out of bed. He absentmindedly stroked the fur of one of his cat's offspring, curling his fingers into the hair as he stared up at the ceiling.

"Reeve, you're awake!"

The figure of Reeve's youngest brother, Vlad, pounced atop of Reeve's chest, causing the cat to meow indignantly and leap off the blankets. Bright grey eyes were upturned into a smile as the teen playfully poked at his older brother's forehead, ignoring the twitch of pain in Reeve's eyes.

"How long are you on vacation for?" the boy asked, grinning as he adjusted the collar of his school uniform.

"A couple more days," Reeve answered, watching the way his brother frowned. "Is there something wrong?"

Vlad glanced at the open door and said in a low tone, "Mum's worried about you."

"…Worried?"

The boy nodded and looked down, hands twisting. "She says you aren't keeping cats in Midgar."

"I don't have time to care for them properly."

"She thinks you're getting too thin, and you scream at night, did you know?" Reeve shook his head and Vlad continued, encouraged slightly that his older brother wasn't trying to deny these things. "Have you heard the news?"

"…News?" Reeve felt hopelessly out of the loop suddenly and he wished his brother would move so that he could sit up. "No, what news?"

"There was a huge battle on the Wutai front. Thousands are dead, but Shinra made a successful ceasefire agreement through General Sephiroth and the Vice President Rufus Shinra. The war's essentially over." Vlad frowned deeper at the suddenly stricken look on Reeve's face. "Is there something wrong?"

Deep down, beneath all the layers of schooling and the air of sophistication, Reeve was an extremely superstitious man. He was also something of a traditionalist (although not in morals) who believed strongly in the concept of fate; nothing happened that wasn't meant to happen. The workings of nature were not to be meddled with, nor was time and space.

"…Vlad, I think I'm going to have cut my visit home short."

The boy's face fell. "Why?" he asked in a desolate tone. "You've only been home a few days."

It was like with the cats, but, somehow, Reeve just knew. Something was out of place, something felt wrong, and he had to—no, he needed to…

"Vlad, something very bad is going to happen. I don't know what it is, but something is changing and it's bad." Reeve shifted as his brother slid of his chest to stand next to Reeve's bedside. "Do you remember when I had to kill certain cats a few years ago because some were attacking the younger, weaker ones?"

Vlad nodded. Reeve continued.

"I think… someone's going to try and do something like that at work, too. I need to go back… do you understand?"

His brother didn't say anything. Reeve hadn't expected him to.

--

When Tseng saw Rufus again, nearly two days since the end of the largest Wutaian and Midgarian battle in the entire three year long war, the boy was literally dressed in rags that hung off his thinning frame, a Wutaian hunting knife in one hand and his materia in the other. He wandered into camp, looking lost, smelling like a crematorium's furnace, and utterly confused, collapsing almost immediately into Tseng's waiting arms where he clung desperately to the rough fabric of a borrowed soldier uniform the Turk wore.

The flames had been leaping up from the devastated field for the past day and a half, the howls of the oxygen combusting and the hiss of crackling over fuel not fully hiding the screams that had come slowly more and more frequently as the dying finally went on their way. The General, who had spent half his time between adding his own power to the fire and trying to direct additional clean-up, had taken on a blank, flat look that Tseng knew Zack was starting to worry would never go away.

"…Mother."

Tseng blinked, stared down at his charge. "What?"

As the blonde's eyes slid shut, his eyes took on once more the eerie green glow and he chuckled low within his throat. "Mother… Jenova… I think I get it now…"

And then he slept and Tseng feared.


	17. Dulce et Decorum Est

It takes a lot to damage someone beyond repair.

I know this better than most. I used to be the happiest kid you ever met. When I was little my mother made my clothes and my father took me swimming at the local pool. My best friend lived three houses down from mine and all the neighborhood kids would play out on the street after dinner which was always at six. At school, I was the smartest, the teacher's pet, and the most confident of my classmates. I felt like I was pretty, that I was proper, that I could go somewhere in life.

Things change, though. When I was in first grade, my family and I moved away, and I had no friends at my new school. My mother lost her mind when I was in third grade, and my parents' marriage started to go down the drain. I remember my sister asking me when she was three and I was seven if my parents were going to get a divorce. I smiled at her and assured her that they weren't, we weren't going to fall apart, but inside I feared the same thing. But, no, they didn't divorce, although sometimes I wish they had; they never did stop fighting. That same year many people important to my mother and father died, and I didn't gain any friends at school. Third grade was a turning point for me; I developed my first mask that year: the intelligent, untouchable mask.

I made friends in fourth grade. We were a strange bunch, the people no one else wanted to be friends with—the ones that hid behind books and speech. We were both the laughingstock and the most feared our class; I crafted many masks in those last years of elementary school—the mask of benevolence, the mask of kindness, the mask of happiness, and, most masterfully, the mask of wellness.

And then, one morning a few days after I started middle school and seventh grade, the world fell out of beneath my feet. For some people, they plummeted or burned to death; I simply woke up and saw it all happen. I was eleven; I had always been young when it came to the important life lessons. After that everything changed. I had cared little for finance before, but suddenly it was a way of life. Before that day, I would cry; after that, I knew tears did nothing. I was afraid, but so were my mother, my sister, my father, and, no, I couldn't let them see, couldn't allow them to worry.

My sister—I had always protected her. I knew by then that I was messed up, so I distanced myself from her, to protect her from my diseased mind. My mother—I had always been her support to lean on. So I closed off my emotions and opinions to her, and I told her what she wanted to hear. My father—I had always respected him but that image was falling apart. I closed my eyes to all of his imperfections, and let my image of him be a lie.

It took practice, yes, but I learned. _Don't let them see you suffer. Don't let them see behind your masks today, tomorrow, ever._ I loved them, you understand? I've slipped up since, but, you know, I'm doing well enough. See? My eyes are dry. Sure, my hands shake when no one is looking, but that's alright. I can work myself until I collapse; I can be your punching bag. I love you, Father, can't you see that? Please, don't look at me now; my mask isn't complete. Just a little more paint… See? Look. Here I am: your daughter— so perfect and flawless. Don't worry about me, I'll protect you.

I love you.

But—God!—how I wish someone would come and strip away all these layers so that I can scratch at the festering wounds beneath. I'm not stone; I'm stained china held together with craft glue. I crack just as easily as anyone else, but I always patch up the hole and strengthen the layer with a slash of plaster. But it hurts just the same when my mother screams I don't love my family, that I'm so distant. I can't get close to them ever because a hug would crack my china mask, a kiss smear away the painstakingly paint to expose the disaster underneath.

I'm not perfect. No, far from it. I'm broken.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

16

_Dulce et Decorum Est_

--

Tseng Chak-Wong reached out and helped a young teen of fourteen, his blond hair in disarray and his dazed, blue eyes aglow with green light, to his feet at the base of his the staircase leading up to the President's office. A trickle of blood leaked out from where the boy's head had smacked against the metal floor, and he was unsteady on his feet, staggering a bit as he attempted to pull himself upright in his bodyguard's grip.

"I can't believe he threw me over the stairwell again, Tseng," Rufus Shinra groaned, clutching his head woozily as the Turk lead the boy to the elevator.

"I can't believe you didn't pass out this time," Tseng answered, herding his charge into the elevator before the secretary could stare too much. "How many mako treatments have you been taking lately?"

It was somewhat disturbing to see the wound on Rufus's head begin close up as his blood glowed green, but Tseng was too used to the sight to even need to look away anymore. The boy groaned, turned his head to the side, and lost the contents of his stomach with one firm retch. Tseng scowled, studying the bile-stomach acid mixture.

"You haven't been eating," the Turk accused, glowering effectively at the boy.

Rufus gave Tseng a withering look as the elevator dinged and they got off in the Science Department Level. Several people scurrying about waved at them as they exited the metal doors; one young nurse pushing a cart even called a greeting. Rufus waved back and seemed to want to take up a conversation with her, but Tseng herded him onwards towards the lab rooms, gripping the Shinra heir rather unceremoniously by the collar of his white trenchcoat.

However, the woman had abandoned her cart and was jogging after them. Tseng groaned and stopped, keeping a hand on Rufus so the boy didn't accidentally tip over.

"Rufus-sama," she said, panting after the short run, "the General is here."

"Is he with Hojo?"

She shook her head. "No, he just finished. The two are probably having one of their arguments right now."

"Good!" chirped Rufus, and Tseng decided that maybe his charge had had a bit more of a concussion than it had seemed originally. "I've arrived just in time."

Tseng herded the boy away.

--

Indeed the scientist father and his experiment son were having one of their now famous arguments. They'd been like this ever since the end of the Wutaian wore almost two years ago now; constantly at each other's throats in one of the strangest father-son relationships a person could ever come across. It had really been a brilliant idea, Rufus thought to himself, to underhandedly expose Sephiroth's official paternal parentage through a few secretly declassified documents. Their arguments were slowly starting to take on a pattern, become a sort of routine; Sephiroth would come in once a week for mako treatment, yell at his father about something, and they would spend the better part of two hours or so in a shouting matching in which they discussed their activities over the course of the week.

"Eh…" Hojo had only to glance at Rufus to assess his condition nowadays, "he's fine. Use a Cure on yourself and you'll be fine."

Sephiroth was still strapped down to the other table in the room, a mako drip inserted into his left arm, but he was brazenly conscious. "Rufus," the General called over his father's voice, "I think my old man's loosing his touch. Or maybe he's just getting lazy."

"Why you insolent boy –"

But once more Tseng was dragging Rufus out of the room. That had been something about Tseng that Rufus had forgotten—how bloody protective and motherly he could be. Rufus grinned at the yells coming from the room behind them, grinned at the way Tseng would touch him now without hesitation. It wasn't the same as before, but it was progress. It was something.

They were back in the elevator, the hum of machinery surrounding them. The elevators had cameras in them, and Rufus was quite certain that the surveillance had been extended a few weeks ago now to his own office. The fortieth floor flashed by.

"Tseng."

His bodyguard glanced at him. Rufus reached up and pointed to the glass ceiling of the elevator as if to point out a splotch. Almost immediately, the elevator shifted, jerked, and then stopped, power cut off. Tseng's heart pounded for a moment and he glared at his charge.

"I hate it when you do that," he groaned, glaring accusingly at the belt hidden beneath the boy's long coat.

Rufus chuckled and reached into his breast pocket to extract a miniature disk that he pressed into the Turk's hand. He leaned in slightly as he did so, and a blush crept up onto Tseng's cheeks, a pleasant thing. The kiss shared so long ago on the battlefield still was remembered, and the loss of control was something that grated on the Wutaian's conscience regularly. Rufus knew that Tseng was too well aware of the changes occurring in his charge's appearance, the physical body beginning to catch up with the mental maturity.

Over two years… Rufus leaned closer, taking a step forward to close the small space between them. Two years since falling off that ledge, since dying, since he'd been sent back here to stop Meteor, to stop Jenova; two years and Rufus had gone without sex, taking only pleasure in secret pain and recently once more in nightly drinks. Tseng smelled of that special sort of smoke, and Rufus hummed pleasantly, mako-altered senses picking up on the pounding of the other's blood, the slight shaking of the stiff form.

"Rufus… what are you doing?"

And Rufus drew away, smiling his dark smile, as the elevator began to move again, the effects of the disrupting charge from a Time materia done with. "Nothing, Tseng. Nothing at all…"

--

Lights danced along the streets cast by the flashing signs, the oversized television screens. On street corners there were men and women dressed in all sort of clothing, some with money in their pockets, some without. There was laughter coming from most of the shops and booming, sultry music from the bars, the salespeople both outside of their shops and dressed to attract.

Reno shifted and nudged his companion into one of the shops where the redhead sauntered up to the counter, his gangly height and tattooed face enough to pass him off as a bit older than his fifteen years. He leaned the counter and gave an easy grin at the middle-aged man behind the counter who looked up from his work and gave Reno a questioning look.

"Hey, Pops," the young man started, turning the winning quality of his smile up a notch, "me an' my girl here was wanting to get some suggestions on dresses. She's a pretty little thing, an' we're plannin' on going up onto the plate for a big celebration a couple of days. How about some help?"

The man looked over Reno's shoulder at the slight blonde currently busying herself over at a rack of bargain dresses. She had a small, lithe figure, and her hair was pulled back into a short, low pony tail. She wasn't the prettiest of girls, but her skin was pale enough to show she wasn't some cheap-bought whore. As if feeling more than just her boyfriend's eyes on her, she turned and gave a small, not quite shy smile that brightened her bright blue-green eyes.

With a friendly smile, the man came out from behind the counter and approached the girl, Reno following close behind. She crossed one thin arm across her stomach and gave a coquettish look at them both, bringing a hand up to play with a loose lock of thick blond hair.

"So what kind of function are you two going to?" the shopkeeper asked, registering that the girl seemed to have a clear preference for white from the starkness of her simple dress.

"Oh, just a little family gathering," the girl said with a light, humourless laugh; "I just need a few fashionable things and maybe some shoes."

"Well, these dresses are prefect for someone of your figure," he answered, moving from the bargain rack and picking out a few dresses of varying designs. "I don't know much about shoes, though; my wife is the one in charge of those, but she's home sick today."

Something flashed in the girl's eyes and the green seemed to overpower the blue momentarily making shivers run down the shopkeeper's spine as she stared at one of the dresses, the one with a somewhat child-like design and feel to it. Reno noticed this and took a step closer to his girl, resting a hand on the small shoulder. She gave the same coquettish smile as before and toyed with the lock of hair again.

"Yes… those are perfect. Thank you. Could you ring them up for me?"

The shopkeeper returned to the register behind the counter as the couple began conversing in low voices. He strained to hear their conversation over the pings and beeps the register made.

"…could backfire badly," the redhead was saying, a worried look on his face. "What if your old man –"

"My father," the girl hissed back as she examined a snowy, bunted-toe shoe, "won't suspect a thing. He's already sinking faster than he realizes."

"But still…" Reno still sounded worried, but trust was winning him over. "Are you really wantin' to do this? What if you get found out?"

The girl gave a laugh. "Dear Reno, I'm insulted. Of course I have a back-up plan."

The male mumbled something inaudible. The shopkeeper coughed and held up the bag of their dresses.

"Your dresses, miss."

"Thank you."

He was still troubled long after the couple left.


	18. Mostly Harmless

God. Oh. God.

No.

_Do you remember?_

Stop. No. This can't…

_Remember… you can; I know you can._

No. No, please, I don't want to –

_BANG_

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

17

_Mostly Harmless_

--

It was storming in Midgar.

A girl in a stained, white dress had collapsed to her knees in the gutter, bright eyes staring straight up at the televisions screen above her head. Her face, a fine, delicate thing, was drawn in shock, her lips parted in a silent scream of neither fear or happiness but as if someone had just come and ripped her heart out of her chest. All around her lights were going on as the television wailed the alarm sound; hundreds of radios and tele-sets were going on as the news spread.

Rain splattered down from the plate, from holes the sewage system and from the cracks in the gutters. Wind howled through Market Street and voices came and rose in a canopy. She shivered and clutched at her stomach, the package in her arms lifted up to her flat breast and her eyes turned towards the electronic god above her.

"…arrested by SOLDIER for the murder of Angela Shinra," the announcer was saying tonelessly as if it happened everyday. "As of yet no information has been released to the public…"

Rufus Shinra couldn't help it. As his head exploded with a sudden feeling of just absolute wrongness, green swirling in his blood as the shift finally was realized, he let out a soft cry as he watched his father being dragged out of the Shinra building and towards the holding cells of the local prison. But it wasn't the image of disgrace that hit the boy dressed as a girl so below the belt; it was the words that came from his father's mouth, picked up by the live feed that tore at him so.

"…Rufus!" the corpulent man was shouting, his eyes desperate, almost pleading to the faceless SOLDIER men herding away. "I have to explain to him! _I have to explain to my son_!"

And around him, with those hoarse, desperate words, Rufus Shinra's world shattered.

--

Tseng rushed across the hall to meet Reno standing outside of the Shinra family apartments. He was in complete disarray from shoving through the hordes of reporters gathered outside, his normally immaculate suit torn in several places and his neat hair spilling all over his shoulders. A vaguely abashed smile was on the younger Turk's face, and he held a wet, white dress in one hand with his electro-mag rod on in the other.

"Where is he?" Tseng didn't even bother to attempt to modulate his voice.

Reno pointed to the door he stood next to him and the older Turk shoved the younger one aside, pushing the door open roughly and sprinting inside the bedroom. Assessing the emptiness with a fast glance, he headed for his charge's favourite hiding place—the adjourning bathroom.

White tiles were tracked with mud and the normally neatly folded towels lay strewn over the floor as the shower gave off heady steam from the heat of the water. The mirror was cracked and the toilet cover smashed on the ground; a trail of blood lead to a space between the wall and the toilet where a long-haired, blonde wisp of a human being sat hunched with two materia in hand—a Fire and an Ice.

"Hello, Tseng," the boy said in a voice of absolute calm.

Approaching slowly, the Wutaian Turk dropped down to one knee, looking closely at his charge's eyes for any sign of any mental unbalance or more of that special blankness than usual. To his surprise, the glowing eyes were bright, aware, and, when the boy smiled, Rufus seemed to be completely aware of everything going on around him.

"He called me his son." Rufus gave a sharp laugh, a hysterical laugh. "His son. Hah, hah…"

"Rufus…"

"The Lifestream…" The laughter had morphed into giggles, hysterical, hopeless things. "That fucking green stream is like bad absinthe. Fix it, it tells me. Well, here I am. Fixing things I can't do anything about, really. I was doing a real good job of it, too, you know, with Sephiroth and Hojo. And they keep sending me fucking curveballs… I must have been crazy taking that deal. Deal with the fucking Devil. Hah, hah…"

Tseng didn't know what made him do it. It just seemed right at the time. Perhaps it was fear, fear too much like that strange, all-consuming feeling of despair after that famous Midgar-Wutai battle; perhaps it was his familiarity, his knowledge that Rufus loved simple touch, loved soft caresses much like a cat purred when scratched in a pleasure spot. But it didn't matter, really, what made him do it.

It only really mattered when Rufus responded back to Tseng's arms wrapping around him with his own arms, his eyes taking on a glazed look of pleasure when Tseng reached up and began to stroke his hair. Tseng gave his charge a soft, caring smile, one that he reserved nowadays only for the teen in these sort of moments when the boy became odd, speaking of ancient religions as if he had witnessed their miracles (or, in Rufus's case, their curses). In his arms, he could feel the Shinra heir shivering from combined cold and a lack of body mass, and he held the boy closer, humming under his breath.

"I used to want nothing more than to kill my father…"

The Turk hummed and stroked at the long tresses, curling the wet locks between his fingers and massaging lightly at Rufus's scalp. He ignored his charge's nakedness, the materia still clutched in the boy's hands behind Tseng's back, and the bloody, green-glowing cuts on the boy's feet and ankles for the time being. Tseng knew that when Rufus got into a mood like this he needed to talk more than anything else, and he listened.

"I used to imagine drinking his blood with a glass of vodka… toasting it to his board before I massacred them. A real Bloody Mary, you know. I hate Bloody Maries. I was a sick child, one he never really wanted. 'Wasn't ever smart enough for him; couldn't do anything right by him. I was his bane, his burden, but never his son.

"But I was succeeding. For once, I was getting the better of him. I was putting caps on his money laundering operations, shutting off his assassination orders, diverting illegal drug and weapon imports… I thought the reason he was beating me more was that he knew. I thought… I though I was winning."

For a moment, Rufus was silent, his eyes half-focused and his wounds closing under the influence of the unusually high mako in his blood. When he continued, his voice was despondent, hopeless, dead.

"Why?" he whispered; "Why did he call me his son just when I had started to truly hate him again?"

Tseng found himself leaning forward, instinct overruling thoughts of morality and propriety. In his lips, Rufus tasted like salt and a sort of odd sugar, the boy's smaller tongue smooth with a strange lack of wear and tear—a little bit like the descriptions in the Wutaian porn novels that his sister had once hidden under her mattress. The boy offered him no resistance, instead reacting, begging Tseng for more with a pleased little moan that reminded the Wutaian man of an abused puppy finally finding affection in its owner.

Rufus arched against him, his breath erratic as Tseng let some control slip along with a hand, tracing the line of the boy's spine to rest on bare, smooth skin. Leaning down slightly, the Turk placed a line of kisses against his employer's jaw line, stopping a bit longer at the base of the earlobe.

"I've always liked to think, deep down, that your father really does care about you," Tseng said against his charge's shoulder; "I mean: he gave you me if that means anything."

When Rufus smiled like this, it was like the sun had broken over Midgar, his hair bright and vibrant yellow and his eyes almost completely blue and warm. "I guess my old man was finally good for something…" he said, his voice unwavering even as tears clearly streamed from his blissfully pained eyes. "Kiss me, Tseng, and help me curse his name."

For some reason, Tseng felt as if he'd been waiting his entire life to hear Rufus say those words, to share this kiss that finally was meant just for them, just for victory.

And it was beautiful in a perverse, sick kind of way when Rufus reached up and captured Tseng's mouth while whispering his father's name. The way he whispered the name _Solomon_ with a long moan to the fist syllable, turning _Saul_ into _Soul_, made Tseng become more animal than man, the restrained desires pushing out past the prison of his Turk uniform, perfectly fitting pants tightening between the thighs. As if sensing his need, Rufus dropped the materia, the balls clattering across the floor, and began tugging at Tseng's belt.

"Eager much?"

Tseng couldn't help but grin, reaching down and undoing the buckle himself, while wriggling out of the slacks. Rufus, not to be outdone, reached up and flipped open buttons to expose the scarred, slightly brown skin of his bodyguard's chest. With a devilish, hungry look, Rufus got up onto his knees, trailing smooth tongue and brushing slightly chapped lips over collarbone and muscle, pausing to probe a gouge scar a few millimeters away from Tseng's heart.

"Have you…" Tseng moaned as Rufus's lips brushed over the surrounding skin of his nipple, "is this…"

"A past life… Never here, never now."

It wasn't enough, really. Tseng pushed Rufus down with one hand and gripped the blonde's hair with his other; he didn't miss the unhidden excitement and arousal in Rufus's eyes. With a stroke of brilliance, the Wutaian Turk growled and used his free hand to brush a calloused thumb over the boy's right nipple, feeling the nub of flesh stand swiftly at attention in response.

"Well, I'll just make sure I'm the best."

--

_People like you don't change…_

Dragon's Mists and Melts—where it had all started, and, now, where it would all be numbed.

_I can't stand people like you…_

It was the first thing that a person learned on the streets and in the slums: don't fall in love; it'll only ever hurt in the end. There were no such things as miracles, and everything was fated in some way; everything would eventually come full circle.

He hadn't worn this sort of clothing in so long, but, somehow, it was so easy to slip back into the old mannerisms. An easy smile, a pocketful of tricks, and, yes, he was back. Reno. Just Reno, or whoever they wanted him to be tonight.

_You and I—we won't work out._

"Shut up," he mumbled to the wall, swirling his fourth drink of the night and knocking it back.

"Reno?" a voice said and doe-shaped eyes moved into his vision; "Reno, that you?"

The youngest Turk blinked and stared for a moment at the girl in front of him, her terrycloth-like dyed hair pulled up away from her heavily painted face and overly thin form. She gave him a shy little smile and scooted onto the chair next to him at the small bar, peering at him with the sort of curiousity of someone seeing a child all grown up.

"Yeah. What's it to you?"

She smiled now genuinely, something that Reno hardly ever saw in daily life that he was shocked by the look. "I'm Francie. You used to take care of us kids few years back before ol' Jena all went an' pissed ya out. We all was jealous when we come to hear you was workin' for Shinra, but you no lookin' too happy."

Reno found himself smiling back. He'd always like Francie even though the girl was admittedly probably one of the most messed up of his old gang. She was genuine in her concerns and could be properly sweet when she wasn't too afraid to speak up.

"I ain't," he admitted, shortly; "How did everythin' go after I left?"

Francie shrugged, and he noticed that her skin was oddly smooth for a slum rat, which indicated that either she was being taken care of or had found ways to take care of herself substantially. In hindsight, Reno realized that Francie had always been quite pretty; she just hadn't been very perceptive of situations and other people's emotions. In fact, she was a lot like a certain someone Reno was currently brooding about.

"Aw, you know how Jena was. She ain't around no more, an' most of the kids got scattered in the break-up."

"Jena's dead?"

"Ah, no," Francie said dismissively; "She an' Fry got busted by bein' in the drug business 'bout a year back now. No 'fense, Reno, but your sister was a low-down bitch."

Reno shrugged. "I know."

"So…" she said in false nonchalance, accepting her drink (a soda, Reno noticed) from the bartender, "what's bringin' a Shinra big-shot like you down under the pizza?"

A bitter smile lifted Reno's lips. "I broke rule number one, and it's hurtin' like a bitch."

Francie gave him an easy smile that Reno recognized as a rip-off of his own. Somehow this gesture touched him, made him feel oddly special to know that she had taken to him so much as an authority figure to try to imitate him. She took a gulp of her soda.

"Wanna talk about it?"

Oddly, he did. So he told her, told her about Rude, about the events following the Wutai war, about how his boss was constantly worrying over the condition of the young Vice President. And once he started, he found that he couldn't stop. He told her about how much he wanted to beg for Rude's approval, how there were always screaming coming from some room on the science floor, how he didn't know how much longer it would be until Rufus broke, how he'd fallen so foolishly in love with someone he could never have.

"But, this Rude, he's your partner. Why ain't he gonna want to get together with you?"

"Because…" Reno sighed, "Rude would never like me that way."

"Reno, you're bein' stupid."

"I ain't," he protested weakly, despondently. "It's, you know, comp'ny policy. Turks ain't allowed to fuck their partners; they tend to die too fast."

Francie sipped her drink and shrugged. "Like here," she said nonchalantly. "But rules ain't gonna stop me from lovin'. All them rules… they're more like pointers; you used ta say that. I tell you, Reno, just 'cause I like you: I've got someone. He lives up on the pizza, yeah? And he likes me back, too. You just have to find a ground. This Rude guy, he likes you, too, don't ya think?"

"But –"

"Uh-uh, no buts. One day, Shinra ain't gonna be so oppressive and he'll be waking up real fast, I know it. You just watch, Reno. You just wait. You was always good at waitin'."


	19. If Teacups Could Talk

_He was wandering, endlessly, through darkness, through someone else's personal hell. It was a hell full of scalpels, laughing white coats, and a screaming woman breathing her last over and over. Strange… it was wholly different from his usual green hell, his green nothingness._

_The scene changed._

_He was standing in the shadow of a great mountain wearing a Turk uniform, watching a comrade whistle a marching tune two octaves higher than the normal drumbeat. A bonfire was up a few yards off and someone was attempting to roast a large carcass of it. The smell of meat browning filled the air, and he felt his empty stomach growl in need._

_Again the scene shifted, morphed, changed._

_He was sitting on the back of a rugged old truck and staring back at a dilapidated old village that was slowly becoming farther and farther away. Cold snows whipped around his sparsely clothed body, but he barely noticed it, concentrating only on the heaviness in his chest, the swirling emotions of _worthless brat, get the hell out, demon, demon _that filled his mind._

…_He was walking through a huge field, deprived of water, thirsty, frightened. It was so very hot, but he was so cold at the same time._

…_He listened to the man beg for his life, but he lifted the gun—Turk gun, Turk uniform—and fired because he had to, it was the orders, no matter what._

…_He was being chased, small legs running from large ones, and they screamed again and again _demon, demon child, black and red _as he raced, jumped, fell –!_

Sephiroth sat bolt upright in bed, crying out as he banged his head upon the bottom of the bunk he slept under. Above him Zack snorted and turned over him his sleep.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

18

_If Teacups Could Talk_

--

_This world... is rotten._

The first person to come see him as he took a seat behind his father's desk, feeling oddly and extremely dwarfed by the humongous chair and the spreading of control panel around him was not, as he had been expecting, Heidegger, Palmer, or even Scarlet. Reeve Tuetsi had knocked politely after announcing himself over the intercom and had proceeded to enter the large room only after Rufus shouted for the young Head of Urban Development to come in.

Indeed, the past two years had not been kind to this Reeve Tuetsi. There were lines to his young face and shadows in his eyes. It was one of the more unpleasant changes that Rufus had found happened as consequence of his meddling on the behalf of the Lifestream. Reeve was spiritually a very sensitive man, very tuned into life and the workings of the world in his own way, and the unsure nature of the present due to all the yanking of otherworldly wires and strings was apparent to him on both a subconscious and personal level. Before this meeting, Rufus had admittedly seen very little of Reeve, just known mostly of his accelerated ascension through Shinra's top brass, but Rufus had found that the longer he had mako in his blood, the clearer the memories—both his own and those that came to him in his sleepless dreams—and perceptions—both pleasant and unpleasant—became.

"Mr. President –"

"My name is Rufus, and I am only the de facto president during this time."

"Rufus," the former intelligence officer said in an automatic, flat tone.

Reeve licked his lips and lowered his eyes, an action that brought a frown to the younger male's face. The Reeve that Rufus remembered didn't have that kind of eyes, that kind of blankness and resignation. It was another expression that Rufus was seeing with increasing regularity in the eyes of people who were not ever supposed to look like that, so passionless and defeated. Reno looked like that, so very often now, as did the SOLDIER First Zack. No. That were what his eyes were supposed to look like, not theirs, never theirs.

"Did you have business to discuss with me?"

Dark eyes (why did they have to look like that, so pathetic?) lifted themselves from the floor as if the man had just come back to himself. "Rufus, your father wants to talk to you."

Instinctively, Rufus drew back within himself before answering in a clipped tone, "And you are the little mouse come to bait me forward?"

People like Reeve weren't supposed to be cowed. They weren't supposed to wince, show visible weakness. Then again, at this time, Rufus was supposed to be cementing his habits an alcoholic and screwing mindlessly with Tseng and Louise—not taking over the most powerful company in the world at the arrest of his father for charges of extortion, torture, and murder. Fucking Lifestream and Jenova both. And yet he couldn't decide if he really hated them or not.

"Your father just wishes to speak to you. Father to son; you can refuse if you like."

"…When." It was a statement, not a question.

"Visiting hours in the cells are from eleven to thirteen hours," Reeve said automatically, a strange note of hope in his voice; "You'll talk to him?"

_This world… is so fucked up._

"Yes."

Reeve smiled and hurried out the door, not even waiting to be dismissed. Rufus waited a few minutes for the footsteps to fade before standing up and walking hurriedly out onto the balcony where Tseng had brought up Rufus's growing collection of potted plants. Heaving, the teen vomited violently into a particularly hardy planting's (several cacti, a Christmas gift from his secretary) box.

They were wrong; things like this, finding out one's father was having a love affair with his youngest board member, were even worse when one was not expecting them. Gods above—if indeed any did exist—: the Lifestream had a sick sense of humour.

--

"Has anyone ever told you how different you look when you smile like that?"

Sephiroth, if he had been a lesser man, would have jumped at the unexpected voice behind his shoulder, but, instead, the SOLDIER general only flicked cat-like eyes backwards to stare, puzzled, at his second-in-command. Zack gave him a lazy smile and leaned companionably upon the railing of the observation deck.

"…Different?" Yes, he'd heard his expressions called frightening, scary, even infuriating, but never just simply different.

"Yeah, you should smile more often." Zack threw an arm over Sephiroth's armoured shoulders and pulled the taller man to slouch down with him. "It makes you look nice."

In the crowd of new recruits milling about below, Sephiroth spotted a rather small boy with bright yellow hair—not the same colour as Rufus's, which was more of a strawberry sort of blond, but more of a true blond—inching his way through the hordes of military personnel and older boys applying for entrance to SOLDIER. Something about the boy's determined, young face (innocent, his mind said) and the careful steps (child, his gut screamed) made Sephiroth's stomach turn unpleasantly.

"…You don't like it, do you?" Zack said in a more serious tone, staring at the boy as well. "This new policy of taking anyone who can carry a weapon into the training corps."

He wasn't sure why he minded exactly. Really, he had been holding and wielding a sword since as far back as he could remember. War changed people, though. There was no longer that blank emotionless nature about killing that Sephiroth had once relished; since the war there had been dreams of another man, another time, another person that came to haunt him when he killed. For some reason, the one weapon that Sephiroth could not stand was the gun, specifically the gun the man in his dreams wielded—silver, sleek, deadly, _impersonal_.

"Hey…" He felt Zack place a hand the back of his neck, stroking with a rough thumb against Sephiroth's smooth skin. "Hey, you okay?"

"I'm fine." Toneless, untruthful—Sephiroth hated lying.

Zack frowned and leaned forward, picking up in his hand a handful of Sephiroth immaculate mane, lifting it to his keen nose (oddly keen, like a wolf's) and sniffing. From anyone else, the General wouldn't dream of tolerating such behavior, but, well, Zack was… Zack. And Zack was special.

A scowl marred the normally smooth, bright features. "You smell like…" Another sniff. "You smell like liquor."

He fidgeted. Yes, the great General Sephiroth, seventeen-years-old and the first person ever to earn the rank of General in the Shinra military, fidgeted like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar before dinner. He was glad that the observation deck had conveniently been built to keep its occupants in shadows most of the time.

Zack glared at him. "Where were you last night? I know you didn't come back to the dorms at curfew."

"Curfew doesn't apply to me."

"That doesn't matter," Zack said vehemently. "Your hair smells like liquor and I know that you have to have been pretty sloshed not to wash your hair before going to sleep. _Where were you?_"

Sephiroth fidgeted again and sincerely considered jumping off the observation deck, into the crowd of new recruits, and high-tailing it out of the building for a few hours to give Zack some time to calm down. But that wasn't behavior benefiting to his image. And Zack would, most likely just follow after him leading to a high-speed chase, property damage, and extra reports to fill out.

"Rufus Shinra invited me out for a couple of drinks."

"_Rufus Shinra_?"

At that Sephiroth actually had to suppress a squeak not quite of fright but of some feeling akin to that. "We had business to discuss."

"Business," Zack echoed in a bitter tone, "of course, business is always the premise. Sephiroth, I hate to tell you this, but that boy—he's trouble just waiting to happen. I know the two of you have gotten close because of your duel treatments with Hojo, but he _is _the President's son. You two are different. You know the stories about the President; even Hojo fears that side of him. And justly."

"Rufus is not like his father."

"Oh, so now you two are on first name basis?"

"…I don't have a last name. And Rufus hates to be called anything other than 'Rufus'."

Zack gave an uncharacteristic laugh, barking, biting. "Have you seen the way he has that Turk—Tseng, was it?—wrapped around his finger? Haven't you stopped to think that maybe you're just another one of his conquests?"

It was Sephiroth's tone to feel anger, and he stepped back, distancing himself from his second, a cold expression on his face. He didn't know why Zack was being so petty; legal drinking age in Midgar was sixteen and he was _the_ only bloody General of SOLDIER. Did Zack think him stupid or something?

"This conversation has no point," Sephiroth bit out, crossing his arms and matching his friend's accusing stare. "So I had a few drinks with Ru… the Vice President. We talked, worked out some wrinkles in reports, and traded philosophy on military strategy. It's the same kind of thing I do with you. It's not like we became so undone by the vice of drinking that we went and blew up a mako reactor."

"A _few _drinks?" the other asked in a disbelieving voice. "You can't expect me to believe that; I know what you get like after 'a few drinks'."

At this Sephiroth felt himself colour. "Well, he had more than me… And we did go out for a bit and chuck stuff off the seventieth floor's balcony until Tseng came and dragged us back in. But Rufus genuinely likes Tseng! Tseng's to him what you are to me."

Slowly Zack shook his head, the anger fading away in his eyes and becoming replaced by a kind of sadness, despair. "No. It's not like that, Seph'," the SOLDIER First murmured in a suddenly despondent tone. "What Tseng and Rufus have is different."

"…Different." He seemed to be hearing a lot of that word today. "How so?"

But Zack shook his head and turned away. Sephiroth stared at his friend for a moment, scowled, and returned to observing the crowd below, watching the yellow head of spiky hair mill around between lines. Next to him, he heard Zack sigh heavily, despondently, and felt his second's determination not to look at his General.

--

_He was immersed, the harsh light glaring down on his body. There was pain beyond pain, and he screamed endlessly, his tiny body jerking underneath the restraints. Machines beeped on and off around him, endless hands and innumerable instruments pressed to his skin. Hair—his hair, silver, soft—was mussed with sweat, and he sobbed pitifully when the lights finally went out and he was left alone. No… this isn't his normal hell, the hell full of saws and Lucrezia. _

_The scene changed._

_He sat upon a cot with his hands grasping the fabric tightly around his body as the voice whispered his ear, "Your mother was Jenova. She gave you this great power that you have in you. You only survived because we saved you. Tomorrow you will pick up the sword and you will begin repaying us."_

_Again the scene shifted, morphed, changed._

_He trails behind a band of SOLDIER men, injured, dragging something—a body, heavy, much older—behind. The men whispered, thinking he couldn't hear them, and they called him things, things he's heard before. They call him _unnatural whelp, leave him for dead, demon, demon _as if he doesn't already know, as if he's not already aware that he's different, not the same, a freak._

…_He wanders through metal halls, passes behind a door, finds a blond-haired boy with his wrists slashed open, green closing the wounds. "Damn it. Damn it all," the boy moans before he can back out of the room unseen._

…_He swung a long, thin sword, desperate—oh, God, how could anyone live and be this desperate?—and the blood is splattering and he wants to scream but can't; his voice is already shot._

…_He ran, faster, so hard, _please, please, please, don't let them get me_, and voices screaming all around _demon, demon child, silver and black _as he raced, jumped, fell –!_

Vincent Valentine bolted upright, the coffin's cover flinging open as he shrieked out in his disused voice in the macabre chamber. For a moment, he sat, breathing hard, before he realized that there were tears streaming down his cheeks.


	20. The Merchant of Venice

Solomon had met Angela—then Angela Adams—at an audition for a new Midgar spokesperson and face for Shinra's advertisements. She had been a smiling, pleasant girl of seventeen then, and he had been a burly, up-and-coming businessman for thirty-two.

"Why do you want this job?" he'd asked her as she stood in a cute little white dress with a rose flower design on the hem.

"Well," she'd answered after a moment of serious thought, "I'm not the smartest or prettiest girl here, but mako energy—if widely used—would improve the lives of the Midgarian people exponentially. I mean, I know that it'll take a lot of work to do that sort of thing, but I want to help out someone, you know? I don't want to just sit back and let everything fold out around me like my parents."

For some reason, although she hadn't been the prettiest or the smartest of the girls that day, her face and her words had stuck within his head, and he'd chosen her when it came time to make decisions. After that, she had come to his office often to pick up instructions for how to address the press, what to say, how to act, always giving him a winning little smile but trusting him to be there to back her up if something went wrong. Slowly, the girl Angela had grown on him, her smiling face all over the papers, and Solomon had found himself making excuses to appear with her.

"Do you… like me?" she'd asked him one day, about a year into the job, as they sat in a café over cups of coffee and scones.

"Yes," he'd answered, feeling like there was no point in lying, "I really do like you. I don't like people often, but you're… special."

After that, they had begun dating, much to media hubbub and whispering among his executives. It was the age difference that seemed to be the most scandalous nature of their relationship, but she had been eighteen by that time so there were not true scandals to be had. They'd married about a year later, and she had gotten pregnant within the year.

The pregnancy had been the turn in their relationship. Angela discovered early on as did the doctors that she was not fit to have ever carried or even conceived a child. Surely, the doctors had told Solomon in hushed tones, she would die from the stress. Her fragile bones, misshapen as a genetic effect that could not be noticed from the outside, would shatter within her as she bought her child to term—slowly, painfully, one by one.

He'd watched her descent as her belly swelled, watched the way she was tormented continuously by pain. Solomon had done everything—he'd given her mako treatments, brought mastered Restore materia, given her a shoulder to sob on when he could. When the child was finally born, his wife had been beyond repair. She did not die, no, because her spirit was strong then, but she was no longer the Angela that Solomon had married, merely a waif, a ghost of that vibrant girl; and Solomon had become emotionally cold, unable to bring himself to care when he felt resentment for his baby boy's ability to take so much of his wife away.

Somewhere, deep down, it had always pained Solomon to bring Rufus into the world so selfishly, into such a broken family.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

19

_The Merchant of Venice_

--

Midgar wasn't a city any parent wanted to raise his or her children in. Even atop the plate, where the living conditions were quite a bit better than the lower slums, there was something different about the children, a difference in the way they spoke, in the way they smiled, even in the way they slept. There were children like Reno who had moved up from the slums and still spoke the harsh, improper dialect, and then there were children like Rufus who spoke in an outdated, overly proper fashion. On the streets there were beggars standing next to business executives at the lunch counters, at the newsstands.

It was a city where people talked of everything and nothing at the same time. They talked about how the acid rain burned their eyes while gibbering on about the tackiness of using eyeglasses these days. More people voted on who they wanted to win the newest reality show than on who should control the media, the laws, and the world. No one cared about the man dying in the alleyway but all swooned over the newest celebrity's baby, millions of dollars paid for first picture printing rights. The women came and went, talking of Michelangelo.

Lunch hour was upon the city and hundred of thousands of people milled about, spilling like an overflow of ants out of the Shinra Electric Building. From the window of his cell, high up in his own building, Solomon Shinra stared out at this all, a wide hand on the bullet-proof glass. Across the room, his teenage son leaned against the doorway, as far away as possible from his father, blue eyes luminescent with mako (Solomon found to his disgruntlement that he could no longer remember what those eyes looked like without mako) watching, ever alert.

They were silent together oddly enough. Solomon found now that he was deprived of his daily work and all the cameras to feed his paranoia, his admitted madness, there was a certain new clarity to the world. Rufus was, perhaps, the oddest disparity between the mad world and this new reality. In Solomon's mind, Rufus had seemed a careless teenager, stupid, incompetent, and ill-mannered until, it seemed, the moment he'd stepped in through the cell door and then not said a word.

Solomon noticed, for the first time and to his own surprised shock, that his son looked desperately ill—ash pale, skeletal thin, eyes like those of a dead man's save for the unnatural glow. The boy, who, for some reason, Solomon remembered mostly as a brilliant, bright toddler full of life and dreams, now looked tired, beaten down by life and reality. He had never realized that his son looked so much like his mother, like Angela—that infuriating and endearing woman. In fact, with the way the boy had grown out his hair, he could have passed as her in her younger days.

"You wished to speak to me, Father?"

Had Rufus always used that tone with him, that blank, careful, emotionless tone? No. No, he remembered two-year-old Rufus's voice as passionate, the screaming and rebellious child, so full of fire, full of life. How long had this Rufus been standing in front of him?

"Yes. I did. Take a seat, Rufus."

Eyes flickered to the lone chair. "I'd rather not, Father," the boy answered smoothly, his voice still young but cultured beyond years; "We are to discuss business, not having some frivolous family social visit. Now that you are in this position, I am become a very busy man."

Solomon said nothing to this, part his mind shocked and the other flinching at the cold emotionless nature in the boy, his boy. He watched as Rufus reached a hand up and curled a lock of long, blonde hair around his fingers, pulling it away from his face and absentmindedly playing at the ends of the thick strands with his thumb.

"You've created a lot of trouble for me, Father," the boy continued, shifting his weight to lean leisurely against the wall. "Surely you know what your charges imply: multiple and serial homicide, money laundering, loan-sharking, perjury… Now that Heidegger and Palmer had been caught and Scarlet has run off like the dog she is, the only person from your board left to give me any guidance is Tuetsi, and, well, I wouldn't characterize him in the best of mental states."

Sighing melodramatically, Rufus reached up and unbuttoned the front of his jacket as if the room—cold even for the well insulated Solomon—was becoming unbearably warm. Sliding it off his small body, the mysterious bulge beneath one sleeve was revealed to be a metal guard equipped with, to Solomon's surprise, a set of materia. A shotgun was strapped to the belt of his thick pants, neatly polished and the oaken butt showing signs of having been lovingly used. The boy tossed his heavy coat onto the chair earlier offered where it landed with a _frump_.

"Surprised, Father, at how your boy has changed?"

Rufus smiled, and, with his long, loose hair and small-boned figure, he looked freakishly like Angela; Solomon felt like he was staring at a ghost. Spreading his arms, Rufus make an elaborate shrugging motion, turning around slowly to demonstrate that he was indeed her spitting image, that the only thing Shinra about him was his attitude, his affiliation with weapons. It made Solomon feel weak, beaten somehow, torn inside.

"Rufus, stop this."

Laughter, breathy, eccentric, rippled off the boy. "Oh, Father, do shut up. I'm afraid that if you don't, I'll have to make you. See, my dear old man, you made one major mistake having your lover call me here. Frankly, you see, I don't like you. No, I hate you. You're…" The boy's face darkened and the green glow to his eyes intensified. "You've got no idea how much you've fucked this world up. How much you screwed me over…"

For a moment, Rufus trailed off, lost in a frown and some kind of memory. But the moment passed quickly, and the tiny, creepy smile reappeared.

"Ah, but I digress. I didn't come here for idle chit-chat or emotional torture. Business is business, and I wanted to discuss with you a few things before I next see you at the court hearings."

"Rufus, you are –"

But the look in the boy's eyes silenced him. It was a dark, almost evil, look, unnatural, like that of the General and the earlier, failed experiments. Rufus, in early childhood, had been tested for materia ability and had failed miserably, hardly generating enough control and energy to make a simple Fire materia glow, let alone become warm. But now he stood before his father, mastered materia on his forearm brace, all aglow, all actively responsive to the boy's will.

"Rufus, I want to explain –"

"_Do_ shut up, Father," the boy snapped, materia glowing brighter. "I don't want to hear your excuses. I don't want to hear that you're sorry for killing Mother or sending me to war or fucking the lives of this city over. All my life, all I've ever wanted, was for you to acknowledge me. I loved you. Well, now look at me. Look at me, damn you! What am I? I'm you, your shadow: a goddamn waif. Fourteen-years-old… Not once did you tell me happy birthday. Not once did you tell me 'good job' or 'thank you' when I saved your ass from embarrassment or worse. Not once…"

Rufus' voice wavered and dyed away as the anger seemed to fade, replaced by a sort of depressed nature, given up. Solomon stood shock-still, afraid to move both to cause the boy to shoot off again and to interrupt a moment he didn't quite understand. Finally, the boy sighed and turned, reaching and picking up his jacket before tapping on the door thrice to signal he was ready to go.

"Son…" Solomon said quietly, a voice he hadn't used since all those years ago with Angela.

His son turned as the door clicked open to reveal the Turk Tseng who was waiting patiently for the new President to exit.

"Old man."

There was no emotion in that voice. It was flat, dead, cold. Just like Angela's just before the end.

"If you call me that again," Rufus began slowly, turning his head just slightly as the green mako enveloped the entirety of his eyes, "I will kill you."

--

Rude put the broken glass into the trash, breathed in the fading scent of the room's previous occupant, and stared listlessly down at his hands. On the table the twin urns sat like sentinel creatures, watching him through their handle-eyes.

_I'm sorry to inform you that the plague has taken your mother's life. I'm not very good at condolences, Rude, but I just wanted to let you know that if you need anything, you can ask me for it._

He felt like, these days, that the world was falling down around him. Next to him, his partner, Reno, rested a hand on his arm, offering comfort that he knew Rude would not take. Rude wasn't a man to cry, to show his emotions, even as the ashes of his parents sat yet unmourned just behind them.

--

He couldn't go back to sleep.

It felt wrong, suddenly, to be sleeping. His body demanded he get up, move about, and react to his environment. His lungs, long content in their suspended movement, demanded loudly that he breathe, and his muscles twitched with energy pent up from his long rest.

In the end, it became too much to just lie there, trying to return to sleep, and he got up, coughing in the stagnant air of his would-be tomb. For days, he simply wandered around the old lab, the library, up the winding stairway, and finally into the mansion. It seemed that during his time in the coffin that he'd lost almost all concept of time; the sun seemed foreign when he first stepped into it and water from the tiny off-shoot of spring in the back tasted strange in his mouth.

When he did sleep, he heard voices, lived new memories that were someone else's. He felt the confusion of another man—younger, he gathered, but not inexperienced in the world—and each time of sleep, he reached out a little bit more. Curiousity was a trait in the Turks that was highly treasured and tempered, but it had run rampant in the past years of tortured dreams.

_Who are you? I want to know you, this person who awoke me from Hell._

Down in the tiny village at the base of Mt. Nibel, the occupants whispered about the lights that went on frequently for a few weeks in the old Shinra Mansion before a dark figure was seen moving out from the damaged gate late at night, never to been seen in that town again.

--

Note: Apologies to T.S. Eliot.


	21. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

He was, quite simply, exhausted.

Tseng found his young charge on the landing of the sixty-second floor, the expensively white-clad body sprawled out clumsily and a half-empty bottle of foreign cognac spilled several feet away. After a few moments of considering the options, the Turk lifted his charge up and hurried the boy to the office that he shared with Veld, scowling inwardly. A boy of fourteen and five-foot-two should not weight this little.

"…Tseng…"

Nor should he sound so coherent when obviously drunk off his rocker; indeed, Rufus should have sounded whiny in this state, but, instead, he sounded as if he was discussing a dreadfully boring business proposal. Tseng swore: if he ever had kids… and stopped there with the frightening thought.

"Tseng…" Rufus moaned again, his skin colour greyer than pale, "I need to throw up."

The Wutaian quickly changed direction (the right heel of his shoes was starting to get worn down due to the frequency of such stunts) and entered the bathrooms on the right of the offices. In a quick, practiced motion, he let his charge down, pulling the boy's long hair back with on sweeping motion as Rufus retched on stomach acid and expensive alcohol into the gaping mouth of the great porcelain god of alcoholics. The door to the room opened, the voices of a couple of other Turks entering before they heard the sounds of someone in distress and quickly exited without looking.

"This is…" Rufus drew a shaky breath, sitting back on his heels. "This is disgusting."

"You shouldn't drink so much."

"I shouldn't drink at all," the boy groaned, getting up unsteadily and wobbling over to a sink where he splashed water into his mouth.

They were silent for a moment together before Tseng moved forward and put his arms around his charge's shoulders, bringing a small smile to Rufus's face. Smiling back at the image in the mirror, Tseng bent down slightly to lay a soft kiss on the exposed skin of Rufus's neck, the turtleneck collar slightly askew to give access to the smooth, pale skin beneath. Rufus hummed happily at this, tilting his head in response to the soft warmth of lips.

"Thank you, Tseng."

"You're welcome, Rufus."

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

20

_Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_

--

He had no money, but he was in no condition to travel without supplies. He didn't want to steal; he'd sinned enough in such ways, hurt too many people already.

Vincent wiped his mouth and picked up the gil that the man had dropped to his feet in the alleyway and, coughing discretely, pushed away the taste of the other in his mouth. He smiled bitterly at the heavy coins in his palm; even after all these years (what, twenty almost?) he could still pick out the sick, rich ones from the pack.

Emerging from the alleyway, he walked out onto the street, pulling his collar up higher to hide as much of his face as possible. Above him smoke stacks coughed pollutants and the water of dammed streams became wretched as he traveled by memory towards one of the lesser guarded entrances to the great city of machines.

_Trading one Hell for another, eh, boy?_

"Shut up…" he muttered to the dark voice in his head, pushing at the laughing demon within his own skin.

The gate loomed over him like a great gothic arch, and Vincent handed the money to the man at the entrance without more than a glance at the surly-faced, elderly man. He thought absently that someone should petition that a sign be erected above the metal arch reading something along the lines of _abandon hope all ye who enter_.

Whenever Vincent Valentine had become a comedian not even he himself was quite certain.

--

Jealous: that was what he was. There was no other word to describe the burning sensation in his gut as Zack watched Sephiroth move across the room to meet the Shinra heir when the younger teen entered the huge board room. The sensation was like acid in his mouth as the two exchanged a few words and shook hands, a quirked smile that once had belonged only to Zack on the General's lips.

As much as Zack hated to admit it, he and Sephiroth had grown slowly more and more distant since the Wutai War. Once a large talking point for the pair, the topic of the evilness that was Hojo had slowly evolved into an unspoken taboo after Sephiroth had discovered what was probably (although, Zack suspected, even Sephiroth didn't really believe it) the truth of his paternal parentage. And, while Zack had stagnated in physical and most magical prowess growth after the end of the war, Sephiroth had continued to grow exponentially in every way eventually to a point where it was no longer safe for the two to train together. No more where the days when they could trade tips on swordsmanship and materia.

On the other side of the room, Zack spied the young Turk Reno, red hair unruly and kept out of his face only by goggles, talking with uncharacteristic seriousness to a slightly depressed-looking Rude. The improper, slum-born dialect the boy used had been improved for public relations over the years, but here, in the privacy of the office, Reno was relaxed in his speech, the lilt of a street rat undisguised. Zack watched Reno pause as Rude muttered something low and completely inaudible, watched the quick flickering of thought in the bright eyes, and felt his own stomach turn over. It was like watching the past, watching a vision of Sephiroth and him before the war. That was how it was these days: everything for Zack fell either under the category of before the war or after the war.

"There's a lot to sort through. Father isn't exactly being cooperative," Rufus was saying, sighing dramatically as he tilted in head to the side sharply to ease the stiffness in it. "You were talking about a discrepancy in SOLDIER funding?"

Sephiroth nodded before motioning for Zack to join them, saying, "Yes. Zack has been handling the numbers for the past few months; that's why I've brought him along."

Moving closer, Zack noticed how tired the de facto president looked and registered a certain amount of shallowness in the younger boy's breathing. "Rufus, you look horrible," Zack said bluntly, knowing from dealing with Sephiroth that those who were highly tolerant of mako tended to be very stubborn when it came to resting.

It gave Zack perverse pleasure to see Tseng, who was a few feet behind Rufus, give him a brief, grateful look. He knew he was happy about this for the wrong reason—it wasn't really concern that made him voice this opinion but the need to somehow lash out at one of the main people he blamed for the distance between him and Sephiroth. Rufus, however, only sighed again and reached a hand up to brush a stray lock of hair from his eyes while Sephiroth cast his second what had to be a patented look of withering.

"Right," Rufus responded in a business-like tone. "So I hear that you have extensive knowledge on SOLDIER funding discrepancies?"

Zack nodded. "A lot of money has been spent on so-called orders for practice materia from this one company called H and S Materia Manufacturing somewhere in the Junon region. However, no one has ever seen a shipment come in from there, nor has anyone been able to verify the authenticity of the transactions. I've only got preliminary estimates, but there's a discrepancy of at least a quarter of a million gil."

Rufus scowled at this and drummed his fingers idly. "There is no such company as H and S Materia Manufacturing. If there was, there would at least be some financial records on Turk papers as well," the Vice President grumbled; "Heidegger and Scarlet never were the most careful people when it came to chances for greed. How long has this been going on?"

Zack shrugged. "A couple of months give or take. I'm no expert on finance, but there have been problems with money to the weapons side of SOLDIER for years. We're always told that we're getting more funding from the President, but we rarely ever see a change in the equipment or our safety measures. I think some of the training arm-guards that the cadets use are from before I entered SOLDIER."

From the other side of the room, Reno's voice spoke up. "I ain't tryin' to make comment on something I don't know nothing 'bout," the young Turk started, moving towards them with Rude following at his heels, "but there's been an increase in drug runnin' down under the pizza. A friend of mine said that the mako jumper trade's been going through the ceilin' lately. An' the only people that I ever known to traffic jumpers was Shinra big-shots lookin' fer a little somethin' to pad their pockets."

To this Rufus's shoulder's slumped slightly and the boy let out a long-aggrieved sigh, much more dramatic than the last. With an uncharacteristic sigh of exhaustion, he sat down with a flutter of fabric in one of the many chairs in the meeting room, eyes shut as he reached a hand up to massage his temples.

"Right," he responded again, although his tone was much less business-like as he began to rattle off information to himself. "So… SOLDIER money missing, Heidegger's mind and Scarlet in general are unaccounted for, Palmer has people somewhere selling jumpers, Reeve has been screwing my father, and I'm supposed to make a press appearance at seven tonight to answer questions. How absolutely wonderful. Sephiroth."

"Hm?" the silver-haired man answered, turning his attention away from Zack's oddly dull expression.

"Do you think Hojo'd give me a jump of mako? Just this once."

"No." Sephiroth answered quickly before Tseng could start to rally against this new impulse of his charge. "Hojo's a damn bastard, but that's one of the few things he won't do. You test far too well as you are for him to consider it."

Rufus was massaging his closed eyes now. "Well, at least that's one thing I do right…"

--

Soft kisses along the neck, the fresh scent of a watered down perfume tickling at the senses. A whimper, a sigh, gloved hands clenched in dark hair.

_Please…_

He ended up crying into Tseng's shoulder. He didn't know why he did that; it completely ruined the moment even though all it was were his silent tears. Tseng whispered love and sugar into his ear and licked at his salty tears, traced Rufus's painful smile with his tongue, before withdrawing, pointing with a small smile to the clock on the wall, the clock reading fifteen minutes to seven.

_Damn it…_

--

Red coat and heavy boots staggered out of another alleyway and right into a huge crowd.

It took all of Vincent's self-control not to flip out right then and there. The shear number of people covering the ground of this place atop of Sector Seven made alarms go off in Vincent's head and his fear facilitated the awareness of his demons to surface in his senses. Something was undeniably off about the way that everyone was muttering breathlessly and quietly as if someone important had died. A voice—a woman's clear and slightly tinted with a rural accent—was wafting over the crowd by speakers set up all over the square.

"My name is Cassandra Dales, and I'm from the Kalm Star. How do you feel, Rufus, to have your father accused of murdering your mother?"

Vincent shifted silently through the crowd and people parted for him absentmindedly, without comment. He was drawn unexplainably to the front of the podium and stage to get a closer look at the object of attention, ignoring the mutterings in the back of his head.

"That's a rather raw, emotional topic for me, Miss Dales," a young voice with only a tiny tint of adolescence creeping in echoed dryly from slightly better quality sound equipment.

"I'm aware," Dales responded, lacking any sympathy at all as she hurried on. "But the public has been wondering about your relationship with your parents. You and your father have been at each other's throats for years. We'd rather hear it from you than from court rumours."

Now that he was close enough to the stage to see the boy's face clearly on the plasma television screens, Vincent stared, intrigued, upwards. Blue eyes highly tampered by mako cast a half-rueful, half-amused look at the crowd, and he could see the familiar sleeve of a Turk uniform just a few inches behind the young politician. Things had changed but not by much.

"My father and I have never really seen eye to eye on anything. How do I feel about that particular charge?" A bitter sort of smile, humourless though the boy chuckled, graced his lips before the pale mask fell back over his face. "I wouldn't put it past him."

Another voice from the crowd spoke up, shouting to be heard over the sudden clamour. "Rufus, you and your father last public argument was over the Wutai War before you were sent out to the front!" There was a pause as the man apparently got a hold of a microphone in the motley of reporters in front of the stage. "Are you going to defend your father against all of the charges which include planning the murders of many rivals within Shinra, SOLDIER, and the Turks by using the war as a cover-up?"

What? Vincent unconscious shoved his way closer to the stage now, ignoring indignant squawks and expressions of disgruntled pain as he did so. There had been a war with Wutai? Turks had been killed by the very organization they served? The President had had a son with his wife who he'd apparently killed? When? How? The questions screamed around his brain like a million little demons until Rufus's voice filled the air again and the miniature demons got squashed by an enraged Death Gigas.

Rufus's expression was carefully and painfully blank. It did not display any nervousness or irritation at such a blunt question. However, Vincent could smell a silent rage about the boy even though he was still quite far from the stage. Chaos thirsted for such scents.

"No. I do not plan to defend him against those charges." There was a pause as the mako flickered slightly in his eyes. "They're all true."

It was amazing, how much control this child had. Despite himself, Vincent chuckled under his breath at the way the boy was fooling everyone. There was a deep-seated amount of self-distrust, an underlying complex of low self-confidence and self-hate. He could smell the natural love for kin in the boy's heart; smell the scent of mako and slight unnaturalness about Rufus's unusually high level and magical capacity.

But, somehow, he knew things about this particular boy that not even his altered senses could account for. In his nightmarish dreams, he had often peered through someone else's mako green eyes into this city, at these people, at this boy and others. He'd seen scenes of the war that he knew nothing about, wielded a hideous sword through the heads of hundreds. He knew that the boy in front of him wasn't unflappable, that he did in fact bleed, that—like the other person he had seen these memories through—what little love was offered was horded and treasured.

"If your father looses this case, you'll take over the Shinra Electric Company and be the youngest business leader of such a huge corporation in history," a younger, somewhat kinder voice spoke into the microphone; Vincent could not define the speaker's gender. "If the information that has been released is correct, the company is dangerously close to bankruptcy due to missing funds. What do you think of this?"

"I've been aware of money problems for some time within the company. My father had been suggesting that we let go some people, but I think that with most of the money-munching executives gone now the company can begin to restabilize. There will be some budget cuts in places and some disruptions in the work force during adjustment, but, hopefully once the case is over, things will be back online and on track."

Vincent had caught sight of something in the shadows of the stage and was no longer listening to the voices around him. Green, cat-like eyes were locked on his red, demon-like ones, a mane of silver hair falling down shoulders and over the black cape so much like how Vincent's thick black hair cascaded over his red cape. They stared at each other, Vincent barely breathing and the other not moving until he lifted his hand just slightly, just enough to expose his great sword and point a long finger at Vincent as if saying, silently:

_I know you…_

And then with a soft wave of a hand that indicated a tall building a few blocks away, the cat-like eyes disappeared with a swirl of silvery hair from the dark corner of the stage. After a moment Vincent followed, shoving his way through grumbling reporters and weaving through camera equipment.

Behind him, he smelt an odd scent of satisfaction from Rufus and realized that the boy had been aware of everything that had happen around him and more.


	22. Fathers and Sons

"Who are you?"

Soft: both of their voices were so soft, commanding, and even melodious to a point. Vincent had unclasped the high collar of his cape to expose his face, had already swept his cloak back to reveal the Peacemaker at his side. Sephiroth stood at military ease with his sword exposed at his side although his young face did not hide his suspicion.

"My name is Vincent Valentine. I was once… a long time ago now… a Turk."

They were both tall, well-built, although a bit on the lanky side. It was like looking at a picture's negative in some ways, but Sephiroth was of a slightly wider build more fit for a SOLDIER while Vincent of a sleeker sort more suited for the Turks. Mutual nightmares they had shared made them feel more like twins long separated than strangers, a light grasp on feelings tying their relationships together, blending until it was hard to remember who had once loved the woman with a sweet, sad smile and who had once made a father figure out of a man who poked him with needles gentlest.

"My name is Sephiroth. I'm General of SOLDIER."

For a moment they watched other in the dark back passage to the Shinra building, everything strangely quiet save for the monotonous hum of the mako in the wires around them. Then Sephiroth moved, stepped forward, but he did it without threat as he reached for a wire, pulling the sparking mako transmitter free of the wall and holding it out to Vincent. Hesitation only reigned a moment more before the other grasped the flowing substance beneath their palms.

"Who are you?" Sephiroth's voice seemed to echo through his mind although the man's mouth barely moved.

"_He's not really your father, Sephiroth…"_

_Rufus Shinra was spread out on his back, mako tubes sticking out of his arms and an open salve of the substance on bullet wounds on his exposed right side. His eyes were blank, dead._

"_Then who is? My mother… that Lucrezia woman that the files talked about, she was married to Hojo. Who else could it be? JENOVA? That experiment, that Cetra monster?"_

"_All children yearn for their mothers…" Rufus's voice was weak, breathy, as he slipped in and out of consciousness. "My mother… She haunts my dreams every night. Hojo didn't go mad when Lucrezia died, did he? He tortured you… and feels nothing. He can't be your father. He just can't…"_

"Are you… my father?"

_Oh, Gods, how he loved how she looked in the noonday sun like this. Beautiful, pale hair cascading down the back, her lab coat abandoned for swimwear, and the dark shadows under her eyes cleared away._

_She laughed at the children running along the beach, shared a snow cone and ice cream with him even though the flavor wasn't entirely to her liking. They ran up and down the shore, forgot for a few precious hours the stench of their jobs, the many ungodly things they heard and saw on a daily basis. Some tourists took pictures of them as they chased each other about in the waves, girls squealing over the musculature of the Turk and boys unabashedly ogling the smooth skin of the scientist._

_And the day began to grow late…_

"I… don't know."

"_Vincent, I'm pregnant…"_

"_My child or his?"_

"_I… don't know."_

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

21

_Fathers and Sons_

--

When the lights finally dimmed and Rufus stepped down from the stage, Tseng saw his face had turned a stark white colour, nearly grey with the exertion of energy to answer questions beyond his ability to answer in a politically correct manner. The boy didn't seem to be aware—a rare occurrence—that Tseng was watching him, and for a moment all the masks slipped away as Rufus let out a shuddering breath, reaching a hand up to press against his sore head.

"What do you want from me?" Rufus asked aloud, a low moan of despair, exhaustion, extreme pain. "I'm trying. I'm trying so hard…"

Abruptly, Rufus clapped his hands over his ears and hunched over as if some sort of explosion had gone off him his head. Tseng held still a moment, unsure if he should approach his charge in such a position, if it was wise for either of their health to do so. Like a wounded animal, the boy staggered forward and nearly fell.

"I hate you…" Rufus said aloud, sinking to his knees. "I _hate _you_…_"

Tseng approached slowly and bended down before his charge. Eyes, glowing stronger than normal with green, looked up at him, desperate, sad.

"Who are you talking to, Rufus?"

Rufus shook his head and was about to tell Tseng that he wouldn't understand when the Wutaian reached out and pulled the tiny figure into a warm embrace. The dark shadows of beneath the stage covered them like a blanket, close, warm, and comforting.

"Rufus… It's alright. You can tell me anything."

"…You wouldn't believe me," came the whispered response.

Tseng smiled and kissed the top of the blond head, lifting the boy up slightly to sit on his lap. In a moment of animalistic need, Rufus clutched onto the Turk's suit and pressed his face against the starched fabric, inhaling the scent of foreign incense and tea. Softly, gently, the older man rubbed circles around his charge's back, and, after a moment and feeling a little bolder because of Rufus's own actions, the hand moved up to neck, stroking at skin beneath collar.

"Try me."

Rufus shifted slightly and brought his arms around Tseng's neck, settling into an intimate position with his legs wrapped around the Turk's waist. For some reason, this didn't both the older man as much as it should have.

"I can…" Rufus smiled bitterly and Tseng wanted nothing more than to kiss that horrible expression away, replace it was ecstasy, "hear the planet. I can hear its screams, wants, needs—taste the pain, feel all the life slowly slipping away."

For some reason, these words were extremely erotic when Rufus murmured them in such a breathy, low tone, his eyes half shut in sleepiness and in the bliss of closeness. Tseng found himself leaning down and kissing the smooth cheek along the fragile jaw line, earning a soft, surprised sound that wasn't protesting, wasn't unpleasant.

"They used to only talk to me in my sleep. I haven't always been able to hear them… The more mako I take in, though, the closer they come, the fuller and more corporal… Ah!"

Tseng couldn't bite back the laugh that escaped him as Rufus suddenly broke out of his ethereal speech when Tseng slipped a hand under the turtleneck having already undone the buttons of the trenchcoat. Surprisingly, Rufus laughed as well, a spark—new, exciting, happy; oh, dear God, so happy!—of light in the cold blue of his eyes.

"You really don't care," the President said in amazement, grinning.

"It sounds crazy, but with all that I've seen you do…" With sudden inspiration, Tseng changed his clean, smooth stroke to butterfly tickles. "Well, after seeing you explode people's heads in Wutai and spontaneously cause small power outages in elevators, it makes sense."

And suddenly Rufus became beautiful, his head tossed back as he laughed breathily, joyfully. It made Tseng's heart melt, that smile, because he knew it was a smile meant just for him, that kind of pure bliss at being both accepted and loved. Only Tseng could make him—this boy, the most powerful man in the world—feel like this, and that knowledge was just as satisfactory as a good fuck in Tseng's opinion.

--

"The first thing they ever taught us in the Turks was that you don't forget the faces of those you kill."

Vincent sat on the roof of the building, his legs dangling over the sides, and Sephiroth leaned against the ledge next to him, both watching smoke and dust float through the air above their heads.

"I don't know why I remember this lesson, but they said that once you start to forget the faces, then it was time that you quit."

Sephiroth breathed slowly, gently. "I've never been able to remember the faces. I have a friend, though; Zack. The faces haunt him something terrible."

"Have you ever wondered… why we live?"

In the room below them, they could hear the sounds of someone screaming, screaming loud and clear words of hellish agony. It was a music-less groan, a voice screaming for a god, a higher power to takeover and strike down this monster of a building. Unholy industrial progress…

"Far too often…"

--

Bitter.

Why were all of his kisses so bitter?

Reno closed his eyes and let the rough tongue snake its way into his mouth, let the calloused hands slide down his body. It wasn't how he'd wanted it; no, never like this, but he knew to take what he could get.

Love was like food and money for a boy from the slums; it was rare, hard to obtain, and treasured in little pockets to be treated like delicate butterflies mounted on a cardboard stand. Hate, on the other hand, was like death and disease, so rampant that there were entire neighborhoods devoted to the sick and dying. As a boy, Reno remembered visiting his father in one of those places, placing a hand to see if he was father was still alive. He remembered the day when the body turned out to be cold and still, and he had finally had to join the line to call for the nurse.

"What are you remembering?"

His father had had such kind eyes, so unlike those of the other men in the slums. They weren't the eyes of a Turk who had been in the service for very long; no, Reno knew what those kinds of eyes looked like. Those were his eyes, Rude's eyes, Tseng's eyes, even Zack's eyes at times—hard, cold, dispassionate at best, a little less inhuman than the mako-influenced eyes of the SOLDIER General and Rufus.

"My father."

Eyes were the first thing that changed about a person in this sort of job. For the first timers, their eyes took on a haunted look and their cheeks hollowed out as they lost their appetite for food, guilt eating away like worms at their insides. Then, after the fifth job, sixth job, sometimes even the seventh job, that haunted look changed. To be haunted, a person had to have a soul to be tormented. After the seventh job, if the person lasted that long, the soul died, leaving behind a shell, often lifeless when left to its own devices, when left without orders, and eyes that stared into a vast void of nothing, kind, sweet nothing.

"Tell me about him. You've never –" a hot kiss on the chest – "really talked about him."

Eventually, though, the nothingness would fade and the cocoon would break. That was when the haunted eyes would return as a sudden infusion of life would occur to the withered soul. Reno had seen men go mad in the slums, in the brothels, in this job. He'd seen the way the whores would pry out their own eyes once shut up into one of the many secret rooms in the brothels; he'd seen that one Turk—what had his name been? Denny, Danny, something like that—suddenly jump to his death off a ledge in one early morning mission. His father had been smart to get out when he did.

"He was…" Reno was panting, harshly, heavily. "My father was wise."

There was, though, a stage even after that that few ever reached. Rufus and Sephiroth—they had achieved a different kind of eyes, the eyes of a god of death, a god all-seeing yet piteously blind to all. Sephiroth, his cat-like green eyes full of military foresight and magical potential, could not see the plainest of signs to love, to kindness. It seemed that only he was deaf and dumb to the whispers all around him about his second's pining. Rufus, on the other hand, with his sharp and cold eyes of blue and green, saw things no one else could but saw so much he felt powerless to do anything about them. Long past when everyone had gone home, Reno could peer out of his dorm window and glimpse the lights on in the former Vice President's office, and, sometimes, he could hear the plaintive howls from the science wing, howls that were human and not Sephiroth's.

"We need more wise men. More than ever…"

--

"Tseng…"

The Turk turned to look at his charge in the passenger seat of the car as they drove carefully through the traffic blocking the entrance to the Shinra garage. Rufus's eyes were drooping contentedly, Tseng's jacket wrapped carefully around himself.

"Can we… stay in here tonight?"

"In the car?"

"Mhm…" Rufus gave him a drowsy smile. "Park in the lower levels."

"Why?"

Rufus's eyes slipped shut and he breathed, softly, "You'll see, Tseng. You'll see."


	23. Strictly Business

_Snip._

Solomon Shinra stared into the small screen of the portable, handheld television that Reeve had brought him in his cell, watching through the wiring that he'd hooked it up to a camera in his son's room. The boy had taken to living pretty much at the office, the back room to the metal world fitted with a makeshift bathroom and an army cot.

_Snip._

The boy was working with his hair at this early morning hour, a small pair of scissors evening out the ends and a brush gently working to get out any and all kinks left in it. It was a particular habit that Solomon knew was directly handed down from Angela to Rufus.

_Snip._

He watched his son set down the brush but not the scissors, watched the slight shifting of shoulders and then the careful opening of the sharp instrument. Rufus lay back onto the army cot, his eyes shut as he slowly spun the twin blades in his fingers, the auditory sensors in the room picking up his soft humming. Solomon recognized the song—the evening prayer from _Hansel and Gretel_—and his heart began to pound within his breast as the scissors spun. Slowly, slowly…

_Fourteen angels watch do keep…_

The spinning stopped, but the humming did not. Rufus opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling of the room, adjusting his hold on the scissors before setting them aside and sitting up, but not before closing the blades together and stabbing it harshly into the wall. The screen fuzzed and the image faded to grain.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

22

_Strictly Business_

--

At a quarter past eleven on a regular, polluted Midgar morning, all activity on the sixty-second floor of Shinra Electric Company screeched to a complete stall as the door of the former Vice President's office flew unexpectantly open to reveal the flushed, infuriated face of a frazzled strawberry-blond, who, it seemed, was very close to exploding a large blood vessel. Or, from the looks of his tightly clenched and armed hand, he was very close to killing someone.

"Look, I don't bloody _care_ what the papers will say!" Rufus roared into the phone he was holding to ear with his other hand, causing all of the other occupants in the hallway to freeze in abject terror. "I want the mako reactor in Nibelheim shut fucking down and – what?"

Reno and Rude who had arrived late at work this morning exchanged looks of pallid terror, no doubt both remembering that one disastrous occurrence when Rufus's father had shown up in the middle of the Midgar-Wutai treaty proceedings. Oh, had that been a messy and rather ugly showdown between father and son. Rufus, already stressed by battle fatigue and the stubbornness the Wutaian lords were showing, had had to be physically restrained by both Tseng and Sephiroth from setting his father on fire with his materia when the larger man had demanded to take over the proceedings.

"Bully to what my father or Hojo said! They aren't in charge at the moment, and that fucking reactor is a bloody health hazard and scandal waiting to happen… No, I'm not a prophet. You're not getting paid to spread conspiracy theories. Get up off your ass and start shutting down that reactor, you useless piece of crap!"

With a hissing growl, the young heir turned the phone off, flipped it shut, and automatically had a coughing fit that involved his entire body convulsing and doubling up and almost over. He breathed harshly for a while, eyes squeezed shut, before straightening up, all the colour gone from his face as he sighed shakily and turned abruptly back towards his office.

"Reno. Rude."

Rufus sounded more than weary, like he'd walked continuously for five days without rest. From the way he was currently and rather absently threading his fingers through his hair—an action that explained for his unusually mussed appearance—they didn't dare disobey him. Especially when they could both see his materia loaded handgun.

--

The zippers that Sephiroth used to secure what could not be held by buckles or notches were made of a dulled sort of silver. It was one of the quirks that the silver-haired general had; everything had to be made of polished steel except the zippers. None of the zippers ever touched his skin; he always put the black gloves on before dealing them.

Vincent Valentine sat in the darkness of the unlit room on a neglected desk chair, one of his son's capes in hand, and watched the boy brush his hair with slow tenderness obviously only shown to special objects or people. Intense mako treatments altered people beyond recognition most of the time; the mako seeped into the brain, changed the chemicals, changed moods and humour. He remembered Lucrezia as her pregnancy had progressed, the growing strangeness in her demeanor, and he could see it in both Sephiroth and himself now, those same obsessions with hair, metal, leather.

"I have a friend. You saw him speaking this afternoon in the square, didn't you? He takes more mako than me nowadays; I don't know why he let's himself be such a toy to Hojo." Sephiroth set his hairbrush down and got to his feet. "My other friend, who lives here with me, he doesn't take mako treatments more than twice a year, not since the Wutai war. He hates it even more than I do, I believe."

"Where is he? That second friend."

Sephiroth shrugged. "I haven't seen him since this morning. I think… I think Zack is angry with me. We've been growing apparent lately."

A heavy silence hung over them before, unexpectantly, Sephiroth continued.

"Zack is about two years older than me. When he was fourteen, and I was almost twelve, we were assigned to spar together purely for experimental purposes. I was…" the General ran a hand over the top bunk's pillow absently, "I was meant to kill him. But he was more talented than Hojo and his cronies had expected and, at that stage, we were nearly evenly matched. So, instead of killing him, I was paired up with him in SOLDIER when I turned twelve.

"I was fifteen when I first met Rufus. He was twelve and had been sent out by his father to the Wutai front to die. I received orders to make sure he was treated last for all wounds and that he was to be put on the unidentifiable body clean-up. He didn't die, though; he just hated his father more than life itself.

"And now," Sephiroth said quietly, smiling his cool upturn of lips, "there's you. A Turk, experiment, long thought dead… 'Seems I'm a death forsaken magnet of your sort, Father."

--

Rufus chucked a couple of plastic wrappers (_Super Energy Bar! All Boost, No Fuss!_) into his trash bin before going around his desk, intent on taking a seat. Unfortunately, it seemed the files that had gone overlooked from the day before had ominously oozed onto the chair; without his father to delegate what little didn't get sent to Rufus and the fact that he was not using his father's large office, the paperwork was now being carelessly delivered and dumped onto all flat and empty surfaces by everyone who entered the room.

He shoved the political history books (_Midgar: History in Steel_ and _SOLDIER Civil Acts One Through Fourteen_) off the left corner of his desk and leaned against the exposed space, a hand trailing over the ribbed sides of the metal.

"We're shutting down the mako reactor in Nibelheim this week-end." Rufus reached and picked up a sealed envelope that he tossed at Rude. "I need you two to go down there and supervise. And explain to the villagers why we're shutting down the reactor because the fucking idiots up there aren't doing a thing for public relations."

Reno noticed that Rufus's health was, at this point, clearly deteriorating. What colour had come to his cheekbones in his earlier rage had quickly dissipated, leaving his pale skin with a pallid, grey appearance. Even the green mako glow seemed weak and there was less ice and more glass to the natural blue of his eyes. As they watched, the acting President reached up to place a hand on his breast, breathing deeply.

Rude voiced Reno's quiet concern. "Rufus, are you unwell?"

The blond-haired boy shook his head although he did not drop his hand. "I'm fine," he answered, tiredly. "Just… go to Nibelheim. Please. If that reactor doesn't get shut down…"

Rufus shook his head and moved over to sort through the papers set precariously on his desk chair, his long hair falling into his face and hiding his expression. Long hair was the style these days, and Rufus wore it in style like most of the other younger employees of the company, Reno included. But Rufus's hair, unlike the rest of his body, was thick and looked soft to the touch.

"Of course, sir," Rude was saying. "Is there anything else you needed?"

"No. Both of you are dismissed. There's a helicopter on the roof awaiting you. Good luck."

The two Turks left the office. Reno chanced a glance back and saw that Rufus had taken out a tissue from a box in his desk and was coughing in a suppressed way into it. Although suppressed, the coughs were heavy and the acting president twisted a hand over the layers of clothing covering his chest. The younger Turk hastily averted his eyes and hurried after his partner.

--

_I'm…_ The coughing was getting worse. _I'm ill._

Rufus hadn't been ill in a long time. In fact, he hadn't been ill since he had been brought back into this past. His constitution as a child had been weak and into his early teen years Rufus remembered suffering from various illnesses as the seasons changed. It had been after his first mako treatment that the illnesses had stopped plaguing him so, but he had still gotten sick at least twice a year somewhat terrible.

"Rufus, drink some of this."

Tseng pressed a warm mug into his hands and Rufus lifted it gingerly to his lips, the spicy aroma familiar from the many memories he had of it. The tea tasted bitter and was soothing in a strange, foreign way. Rufus coughed and set the half-drunk mug down on his desk, reaching once more for yet another report.

His caretaker was not so quickly deterred by such industrialist tendencies. Tseng pressed a hand past his hair and to his forehead, scowling at him as if he was a surly child up past his bedtime.

"You're running a fever."

"I'm running a company."

"You'll do no one any good with trying to do more than you can handle," Tseng shot back, standing up. "You're well ahead of schedule with everything. No one expects you to rectify everything in one go."

"Tseng…"

"Even Hojo is concerned, and you know that man doesn't care squat about the health of people most of the time. Your latest tests have been showing that the mako is repairing damage that your body is doing to itself. Rufus, you're killing yourself this way and –"

The florescent light bulb in the desk lamp exploded. Rufus groaned and reached up to rub the left side of his forehead, seemingly completely ignorant to the glass now littering his desk and imbedded in the arm of his chair.

Tseng was frozen for a moment before he said, slowly, "What was that?"

"I don't know," Rufus answered in an exhausted tone. "It's been happening often, though. Things exploding, I mean. When I get angry…"

It was unlikely, but… "A limit break."

"Limit… break?" Rufus's eyes were drooping, the last of his energy expended. "You're kidding, right, Tseng?"

Rufus laughed his breathy, little trill, shook his head and sat heavily back in his desk chair. His lips parted slowly and his eyes closed. Tseng eased his charge's body into his arms and stood, carrying the light boy like a babe towards the doorway and the car. Even in the boy's sleep he coughed; now unsuppressed, the coughs were deep and rattling, and Tseng—so used to Rufus being cold—felt like the boy was scalding hot.

--

_Green…_

_But this time it was nice. Warm and cool at the same time, caressing, gentle and loving. A gentle voice, strong and soft, spoke in some long forgotten language in his ear, and he wrapped his arms around it, held it to his chest as he used to with Dark Nation when the animal had been small._

_For a long time he floated like this, back arched and hair falling out behind him as the green's buoyancy kept him in a state of pleasant nothingness. Closing his eyes, he dreamed the images that the green placed behind his eyelids—images of fields and cities, of smiles and frowns, joy and tears. The throbbing in his head subsided slowly, replaced by knowledge that seemed innate yet wasn't._

_And he slept._

--

Hojo looked down at the boy in the Turk's arms and felt, suddenly, absurdly, completely out of his own league. It was similar to how Dr. Gast used to make him feel, but there was something guiltier about the feeling, less stinging.

"I'm not that kind of doctor," the scientist said even as he directed the Turk to a patient table. "I probably won't do much good anyways if I was. The condition he is in is nothing less than deplorable. The mako will wake him fast enough, but he's got to find his own will to get completely well."

And he knew with even more guilt the look in the Turk's eyes, the desperation that lurked behind the layers of responsibility and detached care. Years of cold experimentation had taught him how to ignore his own emotions, but he couldn't deny the thought of others'.

--

From the diary of Tseng Chak-Wong; decoded and translated

_Even when he was a boy and I had just met him on the floor of his bedroom, cutting up that coat, I knew that he would encompass my entire world. Somehow, I wasn't sorry. I wanted him to; I even loved him in a strange way from the beginning. He was mysterious, pretty, obviously troubled; I've always had a need to fix things._

_Sometimes, it's as if he is the world and not just my axis of revolution. I can't really say how else to describe that creepy, unnatural way he's able to almost predict outcomes before they happen, see things no other people see. He's not a fighter, but, yet, he has the Gift, the undeniable connection to the planet and the inner workings of the body that he abuses so. But, oh, Leviathan, he's so broken, just like this planet, and sometimes I don't know if I can ever fix him. I'm trying so hard, and sometimes I think that, without me, he would fall apart…_


	24. The Long Walk

Vincent had never tasted anything so sweet and delicious as the chocolate his son gave him after the young man came back from morning duties. He surprised himself with the vigor that he displayed as he tore open the bar's wrapper, the thick chunk he crunched off and sucked greedily on melting all too quickly in his mouth. For several minutes he crouched hunched and feral over the sweet, licking away all traces from his fingers (claws, really) and the wrapper, before he could bring himself back to reality and register that –

"Sephiroth, you're telling me _this_ is your father?"

Zack was a handsome young man, his dark hair defying all attempts at gravity and combing, and he had a lively look about him, his eyes bright and alert. Before his experimentations, Vincent would have blushed furiously to be found in such a state by someone he didn't know, but, as with all things, his former emotions seemed to be depressed, replaced by others that were not solely his own.

"Yes."

"You just believe it? Without any solid proof and instead of the papers that Rufus found you on Hojo? The words and – and the stories of a dead man?"

"…Yes."

A hand, darkly gloved, attached to an exposed forearm flew upward to point at Vincent's form on the lower bunk bed, finger quivering just slightly before dropping back to the SOLDIER First's side. Sephiroth's face was unreadable, closed off to the world, while his best friend's was full of a wild desperation, a lost sort of anger and sadness.

"Sephiroth…" Zack's voice was soft, quivering like his finger had been. "Seph', I don't know you anymore."

Sephiroth's brow furrowed and a frown appeared on his face. "Zack, what are you –"

But Zack shook his head, his face grey and unhappy. The buster sword on his back suddenly looked too heavy for his lithe frame, as if another weight had been added.

"Ever since Rufus Shinra started to take more power in this company, you've changed. I mean, before he came along, you were a nice guy. Stoic and antisocial, yeah, but you didn't go out drinking on work nights and you obeyed curfew and stuff like any other SOLDIER. You were logical, you didn't take unnecessary risks, you –"

"Enough. I understand now." Sephiroth's voice was flat, expressionless, but his fists were clenched. "You resent me having a life."

Meanwhile Vincent was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. He couldn't help but feel this spat was his fault, although he hadn't been the one who suggested that his son go about introducing him to others just yet. But, for the life of all things good and holy, he couldn't quite figure out how to react, how to placate the delicate dynamic between the two. What he did know for sure was that he wanted more chocolate. In other words, Vincent had never been very good at figuring out how to help people with relationship problems. Seeing as he felt he'd failed so miserably with his own in the past…

"No, Seph'! You know I don't mean that. I wouldn't –"

"Occasionally, I like to enjoy life, thank you very much. Not often. Just sometimes…"

"But this man –"

"He may or may not be my father. He doesn't know either. At least he doesn't _lie_ to me."

"And I've lied to you before?"

Vincent looked back and forth between the two, caught in a tennis match of tongues and accusations. He was quite sure there was nothing he could do but make this worse.

"You certainly aren't honest!" A note of anger had crept into Sephiroth's even tone. "You watch me for Hojo. Don't bother denying it. We live in the same room for God's sake; I have seen the reports you give to him!"

"And what about Rufus?"

Sephiroth scoffed. "Well, he isn't honest either. Did you expect him to be? But he doesn't lie. He doesn't pretend to be my friend."

"You think I'm pretending?" Zack was shouting now. "Do you think I have a choice about those reports? They'd be keeping you in the lab if it wasn't for me! I'm the reason you even get to exist out here in this world! It's my responsibility to take care of you, to make sure nothing goes wrong; you are my burden to support!"

Sephiroth stared at him. Just stared, his lips pursed and his hands clenched at his sides as he breathed heavily. But then his shoulders slumped just slightly, his eyes contracting just a bit.

"So that's it then." His voice was quiet and disillusioned. "Well, hah, of course. I was a fool to even consider someone like you could actually care. Someone, you know, who was born normal."

"Seph'… Please…"

Sephiroth turned away from his friend and looked at the wall, casting a dull, almost apologetic glance at Vincent. Vincent felt even more out of place. Zack just stood there.

"I didn't mean it that way, Seph'. I was just –"

"Zack?"

"…Yeah?" Hope was in the crushed voice.

"Fuck off."

"Seph' –"

"Fuck off or I'll kill you!"

And Zack skedaddled.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

23

_The Long Walk_

--

"Argh!"

Cloud Strife flopped down into a chair in the mess hall and started gobbling down his meal with angry vigor. Across of him, his only friend in his cadet class, one Daniel Friendly, gave him a raised eyebrow, inviting the short, blond-haired cadet to elaborate on his exclamation.

"Is it just me or is SOLDIER First Zack really pissy today?" Cloud started, stabbing the poor excuse for a steak on his plate. "I mean, seriously, I don't suck that much at swords!"

Daniel privately smiled to himself but outwardly nodded fervently. "You don't. You're better than I am, but that's not saying much. He should have gone easier on you; you are just a cadet."

The shorter cadet shoveled a huge glob of gravy and mash into his mouth, speaking through it as he gulped it down. "He's normally such a nice guy! Maybe he had a fight with his girlfriend or something that's eating at him."

"Well…" Daniel leaned forward across the table, a hand cupped to one side of his mouth in an attempt to disguise their conversation in the din. "I heard that he had some sort of argument with General Sephiroth this morning. You know that screaming match we heard on the way to training that was made up of one voice?"

Right then the door to the communal mess hall opened and the general himself and a man dressed in a red cape with a gun against his belt walked in, sweeping past the suddenly silent pair of cadets before both sat down at the empty table a few feet away. Almost immediately both men began talking in low tones that Cloud could only catch snatches of phrases from.

"…cannot stay here…"

"…go where? It's not…"

Cloud frowned and scooted a little closer to the edge of his table just as Daniel hurriedly busied himself with his mash. He watched the normally stoic general frown at his odd companion's last words, thin lips twisting downward in a clear sign of displeasure.

"It's not that simple…" Sephiroth's eyes were narrowed in thought. "My leash is…"

"Do you trust that boy? His father, well, you knew his father."

"No. He is very different from his father. And he owes me a favor or two. I know I'm a burden anyways and that there's something here that is detrimental to me. But where –"

"I know of a place. It's not… not nice, but it would work for the initial few weeks."

Sephiroth nodded and then stood up, his eyes sweeping the room and settling on Cloud, who realized to his horror that he had been staring the entire time. A bit of a smirk made its way onto Sephiroth's face and the tall man beckoned to the cadet. Cloud jumped to his feet and scrambled to stand and salute, awaiting his punishment for eavesdropping.

"Cadet, how long have you been listening?"

Cloud swallowed and said in a small voice, "Since you came in, General, sir."

"Well, would you like to redeem yourself?" Sephiroth smirked as Cloud nodded furiously and handed the boy a card. "Take the elevator up to the science level and ask one of the assistants to direct you to a man named Tseng. Say that Sephiroth sent you…"

--

Dr. Susanna Hojo (he had recently applied for a name change but had been denied because of his status in the city) leaned over his microscope, a hand jotting down notes into his journal and the other shifting the magnifying power on the cell samples. The splicing of the DNA had turned out to be more difficult than he had expected even after he'd had to sully his reputation by bringing in the cat breeder to help produce an embryo that would withstand the injection and combination process. He'd done such experiments before, and they had all been failures; Hojo was no expert in the finer aspects of breeding hence his need for Reeve's help.

From this experiment, which had started at the end of the Wutaian War, there had been, so far, ten of the hundred embryos brought to term and only three of them had so far survived the "birthing" process. The oldest of the surviving products was of a heavier physique than expected and lacked the predicted intelligence, and the second already displayed alarming signs of genetically-induced delicacy and was too calm for an infant. Most promising was the third and final survivor, the one with bright, calculating eyes and the strong constitution, but his brain chemical tests showed heightened production of hormones often connected to aggression and schizophrenia.

Sighing, he stood up from his chair, stretching and feeling his back crack. He exited his personal lab room and was on his way to check on the condition of the triplets for the afternoon report when a blond-haired youth all but barreled into him as he exited the elevator. Hojo gave the boy, who wore a dirty SOLDIER cadet uniform, an irritated look as he stared down at the sprawling child who had dared—

"General Sephiroth sent me to get Tseng!"

A twitch of eyebrow and Hojo's mind clicked into curiousity and investigation mode. "Now why would dear Sephiroth send a runt like you…?"

The boy opened his mouth in predictable anger, but at that same moment the door to Lab Room B slid open, revealing a rather angry Wutaian Turk and a very pale President, who was adjusting the straps of a materia arm brace with patient exasperation. Both men stopped at the scene before them, and Hojo could have sworn that there was a flash of angry recognition in Rufus's eyes as he stared down at the SOLDIER cadet.

Hojo smirked and turned on his heels, heading down the corridor to his three prime experiment subjects. "He's got a message from Sephiroth for you, Tseng. I think it might be important…"

Some of the irritation faded from the Turk's features as Hojo walked out of sight and hearing. He motioned with one hand for Cloud to enter the room that he and the painfully thin boy had just been exiting.

--

Cloud had never been surrounded by this kind of technology. White tables glittered with polished wires and machines blinked numbers and letters at specific intervals. One of the tables looked like it had been recently used, an empty IV bag still hanging from the metal stand.

"Your message?"

It was the boy who spoke. He sounded tired, worried, and distracted all at the same time. Cloud didn't like the look in his eyes.

"The general just said to tell Tseng to tell Rufus that Rufus owes him a great favor and the general wants to collect on it."

He said those words in a rush, wishing more than ever that he hadn't eavesdropped on the conversation between the General and his mysterious friend when the boy's face broke into perhaps the creepiest smile that had ever been seen on the planet. One side of his mouth was lifted higher than the other and his eyes burned with unnatural life energy; a slight flush worked its way onto his cheekbones. The foreign Turk looked confused in a flat, angry sort of way.

"Well, that _is_ good news!"

Rufus laughed, a hand beckoning Cloud closer. Instinct kicked in and the blond-haired SOLDIER cadet drew back slightly instead from the skeletal figure. To his credit, the other boy showed no offense in this rejection.

"There now, no need to look so frightened. My name might sound like a dog's, but I'm by no means rabid, SOLDIER boy."

Cloud twitched. "I'm sixteen! I'm not a boy!" he cried before he could help himself.

Rufus laughed, but this time his laugh and smile was different. It was bitter, the same look that the SOLDIER First Zack had been wearing that afternoon. It was a look that Cloud had seen in many of the older people's eyes, in those who had come back from fighting wars or had grown up in bad places. He'd seen it in the eyes of the old hermit in Nibelheim, even sometimes in the young eyes of a few of his cadet friends.

"Did the General tell you anything else?"

No more laughter, no more offerings of friendships; the boy in front of him had shut down in the same way adults did when Cloud asked questions that were out of line. In fact, it had been when he'd asked Zack that afternoon why they had to learn to disable if they would just be better off killing the enemy that the older man had shut down, had lost his amiability and beaten him so soundly and humiliatingly.

"He wants to talk to you."

A black-gloved hand lifted itself up and waved towards the door. "Tell him to meet me in my office at his earliest convenience. Tell him to bring what information he has."

Cloud turned towards the door and was half way to the elevator when a hand touched his shoulder. The cadet spun around, his heart pounding, and was suddenly face to face with Rufus, clear, blue eyes on mako'd blue. For a moment, the younger boy studied him, a slow sadness in his expression as he used his eyes to memorize Cloud's face. For a moment, the cadet couldn't move, his heart pounding so hard and his mind frozen. But then Rufus drew back and the spell was broken.

Cloud never ran so fast in his life.

--

The helicopter rattled and landed with an ugly screeching sound on the outskirts of a quaint little mountain town called Nibelheim. Rude watched as Reno, his body growing lanky in his adolescence, looked around at the open land and the green grass with unhidden surprise and even amazement. Sensual lips parted and a tongue darted out to taste the cleanliness of the mountain air that moved in a cool breeze to whip long, red, pony-tailed hair.

_Red hair, like ribbons on white paper, a childish, cherry-like lust, sprawling over the white warehouse sheets. Mouth opening and gasping, delight like sugar and Sunday, so innocent through deprivation. And a body, thin and pliant, moving, like water on a slick surface – _

Rude smiled and moved up to snake his arms around Reno's waist, earning a happy little purr from his kitten. Warm lips ghosted over the exposed skin of the open collar.

"You know, Rude," Reno began in a low, contented voice, "we should be workin'. I think it's sorta important."

The setting sun cast a glow over the healthy fields, and Rude chuckled. "It will be too dark to climb in mountains we don't know. We should wait for tomorrow and hire help. It's normal for a small team to inspect a reactor now and again."

Reno snorted. "Bullshit. You just wanna have sex."

Rude shrugged and moved away, heading towards the town, pulling a squawking Reno with him.


	25. Ender's Game

It was that evening, after Cloud had returned to tell Rufus's secretary that Sephiroth was to meet them on the roof at three in the morning, that Tseng found himself in Rufus's room, a converted storage closet adjourning the Turk offices. There was a new look in the boy's eyes, one of sadness and regret, as he picked up a silver music disk from the bedside table and placed it into the player. Soft strains of an opera—sweet and tragic already in the first notes—began to echo around the lifeless room.

Rufus sat down upon his bed, lying back and turning into the wall. Tseng joined him, sitting on the edge of the twin-sized bed, hands in his own lap. The beginnings of the opera's first act, the soft declarations of beauty and love, whispered about the room, and Rufus's eyes blinked gently at the wall.

"What did you want to be when you grew up, Tseng?" he asked quietly.

Reaching out slowly, Tseng took one of Rufus's hands in his own, entwining their fingers against Rufus's hip. "Oh, a lot of things…" he said after a moment, smiling down at his charge; "But I wanted to be a ninja, you know, most of all. Most little boys in Wutai want to be ninja at some point in their lives."

With a slow, languid motion, Rufus rolled over to his back so that their hands now rested on his stomach. He had a sleepy-lidded expression, one of rare contentment. Tseng leaned down and pressed a kiss to a pale cheek, feeling a small smile forming beneath his lips. Boldly, the Turk traced a hand up through the folds of his boss's jacket and vest, opening the buttons and lifting both garments over the boy's head so that Rufus lay in only his too-loose pants, belt, and turtleneck beside him.

"What did you want to be, Rufus?"

Tseng shrugged off his jacket and loosened his tie as Rufus's eyes unfocused momentarily in thought. With a slight smirk, Tseng quickly tore the turtleneck of his charge, shocking a surprised and pleased shout of laughter from Rufus just as Tseng began to make quick work of his charge's lower clothing.

"What did you want to be?" Tseng repeated, tugging the pants off the frail frame and exposing underwear-less skin. "You couldn't have wanted to be President of this company."

Rufus watched him with intense, aroused eyes as Tseng moved atop the bed, kneeling between his charge's legs. "When I was very young…" Rufus shivered as Tseng traced a healing scar on his thigh, "I wanted to be a pilot…"

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

_24_

Ender's Game

--

The boy looked like the female twin of his father. Vincent wasn't sure when exactly his brain had learned to conjure these odd comparisons, but he was glad of the flattened, stoic expression that Hojo had enforced onto his face for once. But it was true, that other part of Vincent said rather sulkily. The fine-boned features, the smooth skin, the delicacy to the movements—it was undeniably all Shinra, just softer, gentler, and less robust.

Blue eyes rimmed with green flicked back and forth between Vincent and Sephiroth. Rufus sighed, pressed half-gloved middle and ring fingers to his left temple, and pulled his words together.

"Right. Ah, yes. Your request for transport out of Midgar, Sephiroth, was, of course, not approved and I can't risk vetoing it." Rufus moved towards the landing pad where a helicopter was readied for flight. "I do owe you for the Wall Market incident, though, so here you are. I assume Mister Valentine knows his guns? I have dumped a few of mine into the back for you both; untraceable, but I'm not certain they would be satisfactory to a former Turk sniper. I fear I'm not much one for sniping, you see."

Sephiroth opened his mouth. "Is there someone flying that thing? Or is one of us supposed to?"

Rufus turned around and Vincent registered the heavily specialized arm brace the boy had on his right arm. Materia, most of them mastered, glinted off of it.

"You can fly helicopters quite well, Sephiroth, if I recall the Wall Market incident correctly," the President answered with an amused look. "Or do you always fly sloshed? If so, you only need to name your poison and you'll be good to go."

"Go where?"

Rufus gave Sephiroth a blank look. "I never thought you a fool, General," he deadpanned in a flat tone. "Anywhere. Just not here or anywhere near here. Go to Icicle Inn. Go to Wutai. Just don't get caught."

Vincent had known Solomon Shinra when the man had just begun to show badly hidden interest the young photo girl. It was interesting for him to look now at the product of that reproduction gamble, to stare into eyes that once commanded him into danger and now looked to his son with a certain kind of kindred. But Rufus smelt different than his father. He had the smell of some of the monsters that Vincent had encountered in mako hotspots but also had a scent that was undeniably human, as if he was a fusion of the Lifestream and humanity.

"Rufus." Sephiroth inclined his head and motioned for Vincent to follow him to the copter. "You are a good friend."

The Shinra President stood very straight and was painfully silent while the pair moved into the contraption, Sephiroth adjusting his long sword so that it sat more comfortably once he got himself into the pilot seat. Vincent threw his cape over the back of the passenger chair, still not taking his eyes off the younger boy.

Slowly, Rufus backed up from the helicopter, the blades of the chopper picking up the stagnant air and churning a breeze that whipped away at his blond hair. Solomon Shinra never looked like that, so forlorn and touched by a single phrase of kindness. Vincent frowned inwardly. Was everyone in this world so damaged?

"Thank you," Sephiroth called out.

And Rufus gave him a broken smile, raising that heavily armed hand in a wave. "Don't get caught," he repeated.

He didn't say it aloud, but Vincent knew that the end to sentence would have been _I don't want to have to kill you_.

--

Reeve Tuetsi had been programming though most of the early morning and had only just realized that it was prime time for a warmer cup of coffee. He had wandered out into the hall barely noticing that the lights were mostly off and that everyone else had gone home to get some shut eye.

"Tuetsi."

Not everyone. Hojo appeared to be watching sugar crystals swim about the foam of his latte. For a moment Reeve just stared, wondering whatever could be so important that the scientist would be waiting from him this early.

"Don't stand there gaping at me like a fish," the scientist snapped irritated. "Are you going to listen to me or not?"

Reeve did the only logical thing that a person could do in a moment like this: he traveled over to the coffee maker and stuck his mug under the flow. Behind him, he heard Hojo shift his hunched shoulders.

"I'm probably going to be fired soon after the trials start."

Personally, Reeve wondered why Rufus hadn't fired them right off. Indeed, Reeve was certainly not one of the most popular people at Shinra Electric. The not-so-secret whispers of him being the former president's favorite fuck-toy and that being the real reason he moved up so quickly had no doubted reached his son's all-hearing ears.

"Once I'm gone…" Reeve frowned; was that sorrow that he heard in Hojo's voice? "Someone will need to finish my work with the specimens. I'm entrusting that to you. Loz cries a lot, but he's easy enough to handle once you distract him. Make sure Yazoo isn't exposed to too much cold or warmth. And watch Kadaj; he'll need more help than the other two."

"You gave them names."

Hojo glared at him. "So what if I did?"

"Experiments are experiments. Names show attachment. You made that mistake with Sephiroth."

He wondered when he'd become so cold, when he'd come to understand how Hojo's mind worked. Maybe it happened when he first accepted the breeding job that Solomon had taunted him with; maybe it had happened that night he shared that damn, cramped bed with the scientist when Rufus had accidentally mastered his Destruct materia in the Turk training area; maybe it had been in the moment that Hojo refused the comfort of his body in the cold, had pushed Reeve away and mumbled something about sodomy and sin and _never, never, never again don't you dare touch me damn it_.

"Take care of them… when I'm gone."

Hojo was Reeve's only friend as much as he hated to admit it, the only person who knew that of the old dreams and goals of the cat breeder. They had shared hours upon hours working on the embryos, turning the tubes in the trays, injecting DNA and nutrients, hoping against the odds that just one would live.

_My mother didn't want me. She only wanted a girl._

_I was a mistake. I'm not supposed to exist._

"I'll do it."

--

Transcription: First Day's Testimony of Rufus Shinra

--Identify yourself for the court.

--Rufus Shinra. I was born November eighth fourteen years ago.

--Your relationship with the defendant?

--I am his son. First and only.

--Tell us about your mother.

--…What do you want to know about her?

--What was your parents' relationship like?

--They were pleasant to each other, but their relationship was… strained.

--Why do you think is?

--I don't think this. I know this. My mother was weak. My father hates weakness in any form, especially physical weakness. It wasn't my mother's fault, but I often surmised that he blamed her for what wasn't her fault.

--Tell me about the night your mother disappeared.

-- _Witness sounds irritated._ Don't coddle me with your eyes like that; it's rather distracting. A sigh …I had just turned twelve. I had a fight with my father over the account records. We often fight, my father and I. Back then I always lost. Anyways, it was a more… _passionate_ fight than usual and I had an accident involving a stairway and the accounting logs.

--An accident? Could you please clarify that?

--I was helped, rather quickly, down the stairs and the hardcopy of the logs had a nasty collision with my chest. I'm sorry, I must amend that statement. The collision by the logs happened several times from different angles. The last time I saw my mother was when I woke up after getting treatment.

--Did she or your father say anything odd?

-- _Long pause_ I wasn't supposed to hear anything.

--What did you hear? Rufus, you need to tell the court in order for –

--Do you have a family, Prosecutor?

--Well, yes, but –

--Then you should understand that condemning any family, even righteously, isn't easy. Witness coughs; takes a sip of water. My father's exact words were that he wanted to "screw her after dinner". They didn't. Actually, they didn't even have dinner together that night. My father called my mother to his room and I heard her scream…

--Then what?

-- Then that. Nothing else. I never saw her again.

_General noise in the gallery. Judge calls order._

--Rufus, I want you to take a look at these papers. They are believed to be execution orders for one Angela Shinra.

_Movement of papers; tense silence._

--…Where did you get these.

--I'm sorry; I can't tell you that. What can you tell us about the content of these papers?

--…Execution orders, first class security, delegated to Turk Commander Veld, for one Angela Shinra; threat to company prosperity and to life of heir. Suggested method of death is strangulation. To be personally supervised by President Solomon Shinra. Location of… Shinra Midgar apartment…

--If this is too much for you, Rufus –

_Sound of glass exploding. Screaming. Judge calls order._

--No. No, it's not. Witness is breathing heavily. Yes, it's what it looks like. I always suspected Father would have had it done that way. He never does anything himself.

_Judge adjourns the still agitated court for the day. Court to reconvene at nine tomorrow._

--

Reno shifted away from the fuzzy television picture, his lips pursed and eyes shadowed momentarily before he blinked both signs of worry behind his normal mask of happy mischievousness. Next to him Rude adjusted his glasses, hiding away any signs of discomfort he might have left watching their boss being grilled on such a personal level.

"If we get up to the reactor before tonight and finish the inspection, we should be able to submit a report as early as tomorrow morning," Rude said, getting up from the bed and adjusting his tie into perfection.

"We need a guide."

Rude nodded and went downstairs, leaving Reno to get dressed. The mountain was sweet on his lips, but the morning already tasted bitter.

He'd seen that look, the one that Solomon Shinra had been wearing throughout his son's testimony, before. It was the same one Reno's father had worn when he thought of his time as a Turk.


	26. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

He didn't know when it happened, but he could say that by the time his son had been eight, they had no longer understood each other. Gone was the smiling child with the baby-blue eyes and sweet-lipped innocence, and it seem suddenly, one day, there had been an alien wearing his son's face sitting before a computer with books on physics and html at his side. And from that day on, they had fought. Rufus used to cry when they fought, would scream for mercy when Solomon beat him. But, eventually, he became cold and aloof, created a wall that Solomon couldn't shatter with fists and metal.

As days had gone by, he'd begun to look less and less like a Shinra and more and more like his mother. Solomon remembered a summer evening in Costa del Sol when Rufus had been ten, the way the boy had arched his back on the balcony as he stretched, beach shorts and baggy t-shirt exposing milky skin hardly ever kissed by natural light. He'd beaten the boy terribly for that incident because he'd looked exactly like his mother then in her prime, bright and happy.

But Rufus had continued to look more and more like his mother as time went on. After a while, due to extensive mako treatment, Solomon no longer could lay a hand on his son, and the intelligent mind had matured at speeds yet unseen by any human being.

"I think…" It had been Tseng's last direct report to him, nearly a year ago now, and the Turk had looked to the side, away from the fury he knew would set itself into Solomon's face. "He still loves you. I don't know why, but he loves you just as much as he hates you."

Sitting now in the artificial darkness of his cell, Solomon stared up at the metal ceiling and thought of his wife, her blonde hair delicate in the wind of Costa del Sol as she sat in the wheelchair with a hand on her swelling belly. He focused on that memory before sitting up, slipping a hand into his wallet and extracting a heavily creased white paper square that he unfolded and smoothed out over his knee.

He'd never quite appreciated his son until that testimony he'd given today. Tracing the outline of the red chocobo made with a childish but fine hand, he thought of how his son had tried to protect him with his phrasing of words just like his mother did during her pregnancy. Never answering outright but never lying; it brought a strange feeling to his chest and he feared that if anymore was added, he would have a heart attack.

Flowing scrawl made up the grass in the picture, the crayon tilted to form letters calligraphically almost. _Happy Father's Day, from Rufus._ How old had the boy been when he made this? Four, five, maybe even younger than that? Purity… Solomon felt the feeling become heavier in his chest. He had a hobby of destroying purity, didn't he? Dear Angela, young Rufus, idealistic Reeve…

He set the picture to the side of the bed and went over the desk. The cell was well-furnished due to his status in the city, and he was only bothered by guards once an hour at most. Reaching down in a file drawer, he withdrew a small bottle from the back that he'd bribed a guard to sneak in for him, standing so his back blocked the camera. _Migraines; you know how they are._ Solomon Shinra weighted three-hundred-twenty pounds. Ten milligrams per pill and one pill per fifty pounds.

He took all fifteen, dropped the bottle back into the drawer, and lay back down on his bed, the picture of a red and gold chocobo fluttering off the covers and to the floor.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

_25_

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

--

They had landed in the one place where oddities of dress wouldn't draw any attention: Costa del Sol. Many of the rich, famous, and plain eccentric stopped through the beach town, so the appearance of a red-caped, black-haired man and a black-caped man wearing a wide-brimmed hat didn't cause the same sort of stir it would have anywhere else. They checked into the inn together and retreated to their quarters after a hasty lunch at the bar.

Both knew they couldn't stay here long, but a rest was needed; Sephiroth really was poor at flying helicopters and Vincent needed to familiarize himself with his new guns. The grip on them was too small for his hands and the materia slots were worn almost the point of disrepair on two of the three. He understood, though, why these guns had been provided; they were clean, marked by old hands and last used at least a year ago.

Over by the window, Sephiroth was stripping out of his SOLDIER wear, unbuckling leather straps and pulling on a leather suit with the number eighteen on the inside of the collar and pants' waist. Without the cape, he seemed to shrink a bit, and this style of leather streamlined his body; the gloves he pulled over his hands locked away all skin except for his face. Vincent wondered where Rufus had acquired the suit. Or, perhaps, he didn't want to know; he knew the way Hojo went through his experiments.

"What are we going to do?"

Sephiroth pulled on his boots and sat down on the other side of the bed, reaching behind himself to braid his hair. Oh, how he looked like Lucrezia in that moment…

"We go to Wutai."

Vincent frowned and slipped the three guns onto his belt. "Do we have enough fuel for that?"

"Yes, just enough. Rufus knew I would choose to go there. I know the area well."

He froze for a moment before he let go of his hair, reaching instead for a knife that had also been provided. For a moment, the former general turned the blade over in his hands, conflict in his eyes. Eventually, he looked up at Vincent.

"My hair… is my most recognizable feature."

Wordlessly, Vincent took the knife and motioned for Sephiroth to close his eyes. The mass was beautiful and made up of thin, delicate strands. Kneeling on the bed, Vincent used his claw to grasp it all as if he was about to tie it back into a ponytail before quickly swinging the blade though it all, severing a good three feet off with one quick swipe. Forcefully, he repositioned Sephiroth's head and began to roughly even out the hair, making sure that looked at least semi-civilized before he stood up, sweeping his hand and claw over the bed covers to clean up the mess.

--

The first thing Reno registered was that their guide was his age, perhaps a little older, and was wearing a cowboy hat. She occasionally glanced backwards at them as they made their way up the winding mountain path, frowning at Reno's cigarette and glancing curiously at Rude's sunglasses. Turk shoes weren't really meant for climbing mountains, so she also frowned at Reno's cruder words when they came to more uneven bits in the trail.

"Bloody stupid motherfucking piece of shit rock…"

Well, then again, most people would have been offended by his speech, but Reno was too used to it. Becoming a Turk did not mean one stopped being a slum rat, and Reno had no desire to shed the past that had made him.

They walked on for an hour longer, up a steep rope bridge and through twisted caves. Tifa, the guide, stopped them just once to point out a natural, huge materia; both Reno and Rude made mental notes to mention it in their report. They ran into a few dragons and a couple of cave-dwelling monsters, but a few Hi-Potions cleared up most of the damage.

The second thing Reno registered that was out of place was that they found the on-site reactor maintainer freshly dead at the bottom of the reactor steps. Tifa screamed and Rude lead her off to the side to calm her, leaving Reno to check the body. It looked, by all reason, like a suicide; the knife was positioned in the stomach and jerked upward like the Wutaian warriors who had refused to surrender had done. But the face was all wrong, eyes open and shocked. Suicide didn't induce shocked looks like that; the eyes were almost always shut in suicide victims.

So Reno got up and went over to Rude and Tifa, lighting himself a new cigarette and wiping bloody hands on his pants.

"He's been murdered."

Rude nodded; he'd thought as much. Reno blew a plume of smoke into the mountain air and looked intensely at the humming reactor. Just behind the shadow of the door, he could see things that were definitely not human moving, lurching, and, if he listened very closely, singing in a haunting language that no human could ever have managed to speak.

"What the fuck are we gonna do, Rude? I ain't goin' in there with just us two." He didn't dare say _'cause we'd be just like lambs runnin' to a slaughter_.

For a moment, Rude was silent before he said, slowly, coldly: "We improvise."

--

Funny, really, that with all that he'd seen, all that he'd done, Rufus Shinra had never gotten used to death. He supposed in a trivial way it was one of the few things that made him remain human instead of bridging the gap that Sephiroth had crossed into ethereal.

"You shouldn't have brought him here."

"He is President."

"But, still, this isn't…"

His father looked different this time around. Unlike the first (or alternate?) way he'd been killed, there had been a huge sword and a great deal of blood all over the office and the building. This time, he looked almost peaceful, hands set at his side as he lay on the prison cot and hair neat without a speck of blood or gore. Rufus ran a hand over the skin of his father's face and was surprised to find it mostly smooth except for a few hardly noticeable acne scars on the brow and nose.

"He… he had a note next to him."

"What? Why haven't you –"

"You might want to read it first before you give it to him."

Rufus ignored the voices. Death was different when it was willing. In Rufus's life—both past and present—he had never seen a truly willing death. There was always a kind of bugging of the eyes, but, when Rufus pried back his father's eyelids, the blue was still fine and beady although quickly becoming milky. The old man had even gone to the bathroom before doing this; the normal stench that came from relaxed rectal muscles was non-existent.

A hand came to rest on his shoulder, and Tseng's voice said into his ear, "Rufus, you might want to see this?"

Turning away from his father's body, Rufus took the paper that he had drawn for that Father's Day gift. It was creased heavier than he'd expected and seemed to have been retouched by newer crayons to preserve the colour. Some of the wax colour was smeared places, like water had gotten on it and been hastily wiped off.

Again Tseng whispered in his ear. "Turn it over."

He'd always admired his father's writing. While Rufus's writing was harsh and precise, his father had certain flair in calligraphic style. Looking down at the simply formed letters, Rufus felt the Lifestream within him glow with warmth, with reward for a job well done, but he felt no pleasure and only an acute emptiness.

_Angela, look at how wonderfully our son has grown._

--

Have you ever ridden in an old-fashioned bumper car? You know, the really old-fashioned type made all out of lead-paint metal and flimsy hinges? These kinds of bumper cars are hard to find nowadays in the industrialized world because they have no cushions on the sides. When someone bumps into you, as the point of the bumper car is, you slam not into tough cushioning but into unforgiving metal edges of the sides. The wheel is rusted by wear-and-tear; the back of the seat is hard and dented. Children who play in these bumper cars sometimes get gashes in their sides and arms so deep that they need stitches; sometimes they die.

Limit breaks are a bit like an old-fashioned bumper car, really. When a person's limit is reached, the break comes from the normal limitations to the body being released both in desperation and through years of training. But think about it: limit breaks make the body do unnatural things. The break speeds up the heart rate, accelerates the breathing, strains muscles beyond their ability. In most cases, a person will have a limit break maybe once or twice in their lives, and it will be a terribly painful and potentially lethal experience because they're giving too much and their body can only handle a little.

It is those who brought into direct contact or through contract by blood—as in the case of the Cetra—with the Lifestream that receive the ability to limit break on a regular basis. Even then limit breaks still take a toll, although more emotionally; they drain humanity out of a person and dull the ability to feel temporarily. For those of a blood contract, the limit break becomes a part of them. For the unnatural contracted ones, those infused with mako or chosen later in life by the Lifestream, the limit break changes them, brings them into a plane of thought and understanding that never quite settles with them.

Before his fateful fall from the tower and accidental entrance into a contract with the Lifestream, Rufus Shinra had only ever broken his limit once: the day that the Shin-Ra Electric building was destroyed. Take a moment, just a moment if you please, and think of this:

_You're standing in a room much bigger than yourself. You are alone and all around you the world is shaking, breaking, falling apart. You haven't slept in days, and now that you're alone you can admit that you're scared, that you don't want to die this way, that you aren't prepared for this to happen._

_The great fire springs up around you, an inferno melting metal and shattering glass. You try to shield your face but glass gets through to your eye, cutting into your clothes and scrapping your throat. The flames roar as they eat hungrily at the oxygen, and you begin to choke, choke, and you think: so this is dying._

_And suddenly you feel as if your blood is shooting out of all the pores in your body and you find somehow enough air to scream. Your injured eye can somehow still see and your arms are outstretched at your side like a great bird. Nothing makes sense and you hear the sounds of explosions around you, your scream long and echoing as golden-red pulses—the colour that you mistook for blood—course out around you. Flames jump back with the pulses, debris burn away in the light, and all you know is the extreme pain and power, your voice screaming in the chaos._

_Then, abruptly, it is over, and you find yourself on the ground, surrounded by the remains of the room. Everything is a mess except in the circular perimeter around you, a scorched patch of metal flooring that you lie breathing heavily upon. Your injured eye burns, the cuts on your neck bleed, and bones are broken, but you're alive. You don't know how, but you're alive._

_But now as you stare blearily at the burnt and melted metal, breathing short, pained gasps, you're afraid of yourself. You close your eyes and dream of a phoenix, rising from the ashes…_


	27. The Iliad

_Old man believed all things obeyed money._

Tseng lifted up his charge's hair, tying it back at the base of his neck with a white ribbon. There were boxes upon boxes of these ribbons sitting in Angela Shinra's long unused closet. Rufus was listening to his stereo again, an activity he hadn't indulged in for ages it seemed, and the harsh Latin chorus of _Oedipus Rex_ echoed in the empty office, rebounding off the steel walls.

_I'm not like him._

Outside, the sirens and the clamoring of the confused people echoed up to the seventieth floor. In the dimmed lighting of the large office, Tseng offered his hand to the young boy wearing colours of Western purity and Eastern death, much like an emperor would offer marriage to his empress on the day of their formal presentation. Melodies of extemporanea pulsed heavily through the room, Oedipus at his greatest.

_I control by fear._

"Well, what are you waiting for? Isn't this what you wanted?"

For a moment, Rufus said nothing, his eyes downcast. He reached up and took Tseng's hand, allowing himself to be lead to the balcony where the news crews were gathered.

_It takes too much to do it my old man's way._

Suddenly, he tugged his hand out of Tseng's, shaking his head. He gave the Turk a smile but motioned for the other to stay back, to wait.

"I love you, Tseng."

Clear, even in the din so close outside, and Tseng felt his blood freeze. He knew that face somehow even though he'd never seen it on anyone. There was a special peacefulness to the lips, a strange brightness to the eyes. And Tseng knew. He knew.

_But at the end of the day, I am still his son. Am I really any different from him?_

"Rufus, wait!"

But the boy had already passed into the light of the cameras and the chorus of voices, not unlike the climatic howl of Latin in the empty room.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

26

_The Iliad_

--

"What do you think?"

Barret Wallace looked up from his crossword puzzle to the television screen. His younger brother's Midgarian girlfriend, a young girl by the name of Francie, was sipping a soda and watching the news, one of the few routine activities she had. Often Barret had suspected that the girl watched the news to see faces of those she had left behind recently by moving to North Corel and leaving behind her old life as… Well, Barret didn't know what she had been. He wasn't one to push, though, when his brother was so happy.

She was staring enraptured at the screen though, which wasn't a normal occurrence. The face and upper torso of a young teen dressed in an eccentric white suit and with long blond hair was under the light of what seemed to be the entire news and gossip community of the great city that never slept. He had a grave expression on his face as he answered questions in a smooth, calm voice, still tinged with the tones of a child but tempered by breeding and experience.

"He's the Shinra heir, isn't he? So he's taking over the company now that his father is gone. It's the way it works."

Francie was chewing the plastic straw, her eyes inspecting the screen like it was the most interesting thing in the world. "There is a belief where I come from that he's a god."

It was the first time the girl had ever mentioned believing in anything. She was always careful around Barret and most of the people of North Corel never to delve into personal subjects. It drew Barret's attention fully out.

"A Shinra a god?"

Barret looked closer at the boy. He really didn't look like much. Indeed, the only thing about him that was unique was his eyes and the unmistakable glow of mako in them. He wasn't physically imposing; he didn't even dress to impress. But yet…

_The responsibility is great, but there is much more to this company than just money. My father believed only in money, but this company provides jobs and energy to the world. The people need to have a strong backbone to lean on in times of crisis and to protect them in times of trouble. My father ignored this need in his customers, but I will be here for all. We will be here for all. Shin-Ra is a company that serves the people. We need to do a better job of it._

The strong man shrugged. "Who knows?"

--

Reeve glanced up from the newest paper that he was concentrating on, his desk cluttered with several other people's work. He couldn't do anything with Scarlet or Heidegger's things, the insane connections of diagrams jumbled and out of order, and he hoped heavily that Rufus would find suitable replacements soon. In truth he was working like this so he wouldn't have to think, wouldn't have to linger on… He looked harder at the Turk who'd just entered the room.

And just as quickly he decided that Tseng had either just been injected with a lethal poison that would kill him slowly and painfully or that Rufus had done something ultimately self-sacrificing and stupid. Again. In fact, it had to be really bad because Tseng didn't even wait for Reeve to invite him to sit down before bursting out:

"Fucking Shinras!"

Reeve sighed and placed the report down. "Of course," he said in a placating tone.

Tseng dug around in an inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a rather squashed and sad-looking box of cigarettes that he'd probably confiscated from Reno; that was, after all, the way most smokers in the upper levels of the building got their cigarettes these days. With shaking hands he tugged one out of the box and stuck it between his lips before fishing out a lighter to light the tobacco. The scent reminded Reeve of… The cat-breeder squashed the thought.

"How _dare_ he push me away like that?" Tseng raged, exhaling noisily through his nose. "And after telling me that he loves me… Hah! You don't push people you love to the side like that so that you can take all the pain for yourself. Always pushing people away like that—why can't he be simple for once? At this rate he's going to end up killing himself before he's eighteen! And where will that leave me? My whole life revolves around a godling boy! My whole fucking life! I'm like – like a sick priest or something! Fucking Shin-Ra, fucking Lifestream, fucking Rufus, fucking fuck!"

Even though Tseng wasn't a regular smoker, when he was angry, he could burn a cigarette just as well as an experienced one. Long fingers well-versed with variously weapons pinched the paper and tobacco, threatening to cut off the flame with the grinding motions they were making near to the tip.

But, like Tseng's cigarettes, his anger didn't last very long when it came to Rufus. Reeve knew that, unlike Tseng who genuinely loved Rufus, his own relationship with the late Solomon had been something more like an advanced case of Stockholm syndrome. Solomon, unlike Rufus, had never shown him any signs of true affection, easily tossing him onto the side burner if a pleasing woman came along. Rufus, by all accounts (although there aren't many; Reeve along with Rude was simply privy to Tseng's smoke rantings about his love life much like the General was privy to Rufus's occasional snap escapades of mischievous insanity through the bowels of the city occasionally accompanied by Reno), was completely dedicated to Tseng in relationship, never glancing or even showing interest in any other advances by either sex.

_Puff, puff, puff_ went Tseng's cigarette in the angry silence.

"Do you think he meant it?" Tseng's voice was almost inaudible, but Reeve had good hearing from the paranoia Midgar created. "I don't think he even knows what love is…"

Reeve picked up another report, scanned over the half-finished diagrams of something called _Brother Ray_ or something for the sort, before promptly putting it through his much abused paper shredder. The poor machine whirred sadly.

"He meant what the word means to him. Rufus is honest with his words if not entirely straightforward all the time."

Reeve knew this was partly a lie; Rufus really was honest but was never straightforward. It had been one of the qualities that had driven his father crazy, one of the many that Solomon had deep-down envied. Solomon either told the truth in completeness or lied; he simply lacked the ability to do it any other way. In the chair, Tseng's breathing was more regular, the thin spiral of smoke curling upwards instead of being punctuated by puffs.

These days Reeve felt less and less like he needed to attend to human needs. He still slept and ate of course, but there wasn't a real need for his own feelings. There was a certain calling to others he felt, a desire to do well for others. Without fully inspecting another diagram he put the paper through the shredder.

For a long time, there was only the sound of papers being shred and Tseng's half-choked breathing. Reeve wondered how many nights and days he'd spent like this over Solomon, not because of kindness but because of feeling so utterly worthless. Once Reeve had envied Tseng for being more than just a fuck-toy to be used in boredom, but, somehow, now it seemed crueler to be shown kindness by someone who had come to be considered a god. It was like a merciful hand of lightning, a soft caress of a golden whip.

"What am I to do, Reeve?" Tseng's cigarette was burning out.

Reeve looked up and studied his friend for a moment, taking in the conflict of emotions so strong that a human body could quickly wither in the battle.

"Stand by him and do what your heart tells you is right for the both of you."

It was the only thing that had ever worked for Reeve.

--

Rude, Reno decided, was crazy. Grade-A loony bin material with a big black stamp on his file and everything.

"You're mad!" the redhead shrieked even as he handed another bomb to his partner. "We was supposed to shut the damn thing down—not make it go 'boom'!"

The third black box was set down at the base and Rude began wiring it to the two others. "Our orders were simply to put the reactor out of operations. Unless you want to go in there –"

"With those freaky things?" Reno knew he was becoming hysterical and was scaring their guide more than she deserved. "Hell no! But that ain't no excuse to go blowin' up comp'ny property!"

Wordlessly, Rude pointed over to the mangled body on the ground near by as to say: _isn't that enough evidence not to go inside to shut this thing down?_ Letting out a squawk of exasperation, Reno jogged back to the helicopter that he'd flown up from the town, picked up two more of the remaining bombs and jogged them back over to his partner who dutifully slipped wires into sockets and screwed things into holes. In a few minutes Rude nodded to himself and got up, holding the remote control in one hand. Reno took at as his queue to run like a chicken with its head cut off for the nearest shelter that was non-flammable; he grabbed Tifa's arm and dragged her along for good measure.

"What's going on?" she cried, her voice cracking in both fear and confusion.

"Rudey's jumpin' to conclusions as usual. 'Gets the job done fast, though."

"But what –?"

Rude came running up to them, his hands covering the back of his head and neck, the silent man's universal sign (at least universal to Reno) for _run, fuck it, run, this ain't gonna be pretty!_ Reno scrambled into the seat of the helicopter while Rude scooped up Tifa and roughly jumped onto the flying machine with an audible grunt.

"Beep!" said the remote in a cheerful voice. "Twenty!"

Swearing, Reno activated his Barrier materia, feeling the all-too-familiar drain of power when the magic went up. Immediately, he felt Rude press a hand to his shoulder and Reno sucked in his breath concentrating on casting an ice spell in front of the copter to block flames before they reached the barrier.

Still, once the spell was cast, he felt the helicopter buck and rattle, heard with a detached awareness the sound of the girl screaming, felt Rude's lips press again his cheek and tongue lick away his tears. He closed his eyes and retreated from the scene of destruction, thinking of nothing, begging for no dreams.

Reno had no talent for materia. He dreamed of his time in Wutai.

--

It had been a very long time, Rufus realized, since he had last been alone.

When he'd been in Junon, he'd always been alone in that small little cell of an office that his father had sent him to. He'd spent hours in silence before he discovered opera, hours trying not to call Tseng to talk about something that seemed would never be. He'd spent years in loneliness, slowly becoming bitterer and more cynical by the day until his father had been killed.

The gun clicked and Rufus realized he'd used up the round he'd been sending through the target while he'd been thinking. Reloading with a quiet pensiveness, he leveled the gun again at the targets.

Jenova… Well, that monster still needed to be stopped. With Sephiroth off with the legendary Turk Valentine, hopefully the General would stay out of the way until the monster could be dealt with. Hojo needed to be taken care of and his father's old board needed to be found and taken care of. Wincing, Rufus pressed his free hand to his forehead and rubbed at the soreness growing within. When the Lifestream demanded death, it didn't settle for anything but death. In its opinion, Sephiroth had to go. Period.

_Unnatural._

"But I'm unnatural as well," Rufus pointed out, forgetting that he was talking aloud to thin air.

_You exist in this fashion because you are supposed to. You are not normal, but you are not unnatural. Once, you were normal. But now you are no longer just so._

Rufus realized that he'd reached a point where he didn't even have to look at the targets to hit them. He shuddered and hesistated before voicing his next question.

"If my father still dies this time around and Jenova must still die, will Tseng have to die again as well?"

Tseng had died in the Temple of Ancients in the world of Rufus's memory. He remembered the desperate guilt in his lover's eyes, how he'd weaseled his way into the investigation of the Ancients left over from Solomon's presidency. He'd always regretted having to hurt Aeris, hated the knowledge that all his important jobs were to slowly turn children into something they were never supposed to be.

There was a long silence punctuated by the gun firing until the Lifestream responded in a quiet tone it reserved only for the rarest of apologies:

_That wasn't supposed to happen._

It took him a moment to form his response. "What?"

_He wasn't supposed to die. You weren't supposed to die._

"Then why didn't you save him?"

_You were born with an affiliation for being a medium of us and mortals. But you were shut us out early on and we stopped paying attention. For that, we are sorry._

"You didn't answer my question."

_Tseng's life… is a dependent one._

A beat. "So I'm responsible for it. I must protect it if he is to live through this."

…_Yes._

Rufus fired the gun and didn't respond.


	28. Frankenstein

This story is about three men who all learned, as very young boys, that it wasn't alright to cry.

It really isn't alright to cry. People like to tell children that everyone cries. But just because everyone does it, would you jump off London Bridge as well? Crying is a sign, an unforgivable sign, of weakness. A weakness of the heart and of the mind, a lack of control: this I firmly believe.

When Reno was born, his mother had held him to her bosom and sobbed into the little blue blanket the nurse wrapped him in because she hadn't known if his father would be coming home that night. He'd spent the first years of his young life holding his mother's hand as they went to visit his father in the hospital, at restaurants below the plate, and on train cars until his mother had one day left him in his father's arms and never come back for him. Reno remembered very little about his mother; he remembered a lighter red than his own hair, remembered wiping away her tears for her. _Mama, don't cry. I'm here._

Sephiroth had never cried to anyone's knowledge, not even the day he was born. Perhaps it was because the doctor delivering him had cackled wildly and his mother had been dead. Perhaps it was because a man had been howling outside the door and the nurse had been screaming something horrific. But he hadn't cried, not once since he'd emerged from his mother's womb. Tears, he knew, would have gotten him hurt more, perhaps even cast aside for being a failure, because it would prove there was humanity in him and the worst thing he could be with Hojo watching his every move was human.

Under the great lamp and atop the operation table, Rufus had screamed instead of cried. A small baby, born underweight and tiny, he'd screamed out in pain when the doctor removed him from his mother during the cesarean. All these years later, he still had the scar on his back from the scalpel cut, still carried the discoloured patches of skin from the tough stickers used to measure heart rate and breathing. He didn't know when he stopped screaming when it came to pain, but he'd been shot, beaten, slashed, torn. Screaming was redundant at this point and crying had never gotten him anywhere.

This doesn't mean that they've never cried at all. In fact, in private, they cry an awful lot. Reno cries behind cigarette smoke and bathroom doors, Sephiroth with his head buried in his pillow and fist in his mouth, Rufus into a vodka bottle and blades of broken glass. But these are the men—boys, really—chosen to be our gods, our mortal gods, _guide me on my steps to Heaven_.

It really isn't alright to cry. This I firmly believe.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

_27_

Frankenstein

--

"What did you do to him?"

It was less of a question and more of a statement. Zack's voice was cold and hard.

"I didn't do anything."

"Bullshit."

A short silence and the boy stood alone before the great window, a silk robe on his shoulders and spread across the floor. He looked much like the blond prince he was often compared to, that figure that was hinted to already be worshipped beneath the plates.

"I don't lie, Zack," Rufus said in a quiet tone. "You know I don't lie."

The lamp on the desk rattled and fell over with the force of Zack's fist connecting with the tabletop. Rufus didn't turn around, keeping his hands clasped within the deep sleeves. He listened to the SOLDIER's heavy breathing.

"I didn't do anything," Rufus said again. "I wouldn't so much as lay a single finger such a precious ally. Sephiroth is much too precious to loose."

"Then why won't you tell me where he is?" the General's second cried, no longer angry but despairing. "You know everything that happens! You're supposed to be a goddamn messiah!"

Rufus didn't turn, but his head dipped low to his chest. "I am no prophet or god, Zack."

"Then are the stories all lies? What about the explosion in Nibelheim a few hours back? How did you know that was going to happen, that there were unnatural things in there that needed to be investigated? How is it that you knew what Wutai wanted at the end of the war? You know everything; admit it."

The robe had been woven perhaps two to three hundred years back when Wutai had been at the very height of its power. Tseng has gotten it imported for him through some of the background channels between the countries as a thirteenth birthday gift, had said the dusk red colour suited Rufus more than the vibrant passion of the golden phoenix. It had last been worn by the priest-prophet Heung Wan, the day before he died.

Rufus had read Priest Heung's works and life story. He respected the man.

"I only know possibilities," Rufus answered, shaking his head. "I really know no more than anyone else who has an imagination."

It had taken him a long time to admit that to himself. The future he knew was really only a possibility. A stone thrown into a pound made ripples, branching out and wafting in even patterns. But life was not water ripples, uniform and calm. Life was like light comprised of a great infinity of particles moving at a constant speed but changing frequency. Never uniform, never the same: life had no pattern.

--

His mouth tasted like dirt, dried blood, and grass. Reno groaned into the concoction, rolling over to face the darkened sky, eyes half-opening to take in the fire next to him. The guide girl, Tifa, was sitting cross-legged on a rock, a stick poking the fire as she started and turned her eyes to look him over.

"Oh," she said, "you're awake."

Reno had a snappy reply ready, but his mouth was too dry and icky tasting to warrant the effort of speech. Instead, he coughed and motioned to his throat with the universal sign for _I'm thirsty, bitch; gimme water._ She scowled at his attitude but handed him a canteen anyways. Reno took greedy gulps of the lukewarm liquid.

"Where's Rude?"

Tifa shrugged, her lips pursed as she watched him over her slender shoulder. Reno noticed she had abandoned or lost that ridiculous cowboy hat she'd been wearing before at some point.

"He's fixing the helicopter. It took some damages in the explosion."

The red-haired Turk let out a sigh he didn't know he'd been holding. Everything was alright. He was about to close his eyes again when the girl spoke, a soft, angry tone in her voice.

"You two are so disgusting, you know that?"

Reno's eyes snapped back over to her and he pushed himself up onto his elbow, frowning with narrowed eyes at the guide. She scowled back, hugging her knees to her blooming chest and idly twitching the poker-stick in the dirt.

"Whadda ya mean we're disgustin'?" Reno inquired, a little louder than he had intended.

Dusty shoulder rose and fell, like a horse shrugging off a fly. "I mean," she said in a slow tone, "I don't think you two should be kissing or anything like that. You're men. It's wrong."

For a long moment, Reno was silent. She watched him, waiting, like a panther on its prey.

"Well," Reno began in the same slow tone, "you're entitled to yer opinion. It ain't somethin' I wanted, you understand. But love is like that; it ain't a convenient thing. If it was, then my old man would've married some Shinra-lovin' betty and stayed a Turk, and I would've been born on the plate and gone to schoolin' and stuff rather than learnin' to gamble and steal in place of my letters and numbers. But it ain't, and that's how it is. Me an' Rude, we ain't got anybody else anymore."

She was silent, staring off at some point only she could see. Reno lay back and closed his eyes, listening to the nearby movements of his lover.

He slept.

--

A man and a teen walked into a bar.

The bartender was a stocky man with a flashy smile, but he had a kind enough disposition to be likeable, and the waitresses were dressed modestly and carried little or no change on them. In other words, it was a nice little bar with a bit of class.

The man and the teen seat themselves at a table near the back. They looked a little awkward in the beach town; their skin was pale, and they were both dressed from head to toe in black leather. The waitress took their orders (a shotgun and a sidecar respectively) without questions before trotting back up to the bar to deliver the information in a cheerful chirp.

"You don't like women much, do you?" the man asked, his tone not meant to be insulting.

Black-gloved fingers twirled a stray lock of uneven, feathery hair. "It was not considered an essential component for my development to develop relationships with anyone let alone the opposite sex. I do like women," he said after a moment, "but they are… puzzling."

"So you're straight?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "Of course I am," he started almost indignantly before a frown beset his features. "Did you think I wasn't?"

Vincent shrugged and sipped his drink. "No. I knew you had no interest in that friend of yours; you were far too attentive to the girls on the beach."

"Zack?" the younger asked, ignoring the later part of the statement. "Why would you say that?"

"He is completely enamored you."

There was a moment of silence before Sephiroth broke into peals of laughter. The bartender glanced up from mixing a cocktail to observe the shaggy-haired teen guffawing almost to the point of tears (indeed, he was very close to falling off his tall stool) and the man with the red scarf rolling his eyes. It seemed that it was only a couple of friends or cousins out on vacation together, celebrating life.

"Oh, that's a good one," Sephiroth sighed after his fit ended. "Pull the other, Valentine, pull the other."

Vincent beset his son and companion with, perhaps, the closest he could get to an expression outside of actually moving his facial muscles. The expression clearly was not terribly amused and indicated that his previous statement hadn't been a joke at all. Sephiroth smirk fell.

"Oh," he repeated but this time in a very small tone. "Oh."

"Buck up, my boy," Vincent said in a deep, mocking tone and a sly smile. "That means you're all the more desirable to the ladies."

A moment of silence before: "Valentine."

"…?" Vincent was currently distracted by a particularly tasty ice cube.

"We," Sephiroth stated with such intensity it would have detonated a nuclear bomb, "going to the beach tomorrow."

Vincent choked on his ice cube. "What?"

There was a strange gleam in Sephiroth's eyes. It was an unnerving gleam. It looked almost like fire, passionate fire, determined to get at any cost… Vincent felt his stomach meet his feet. Oh, no.

"We, my deprived and vampiric father, going to go _babe-watching_."

Vincent felt a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein. He had just unleashed a monster upon an unsuspecting world.


	29. My Fair Lady

She had spent the night in jail again, curled up in the raggedy old blanket and using the soap left on the in-cell sink to was

She had spent the night in jail again, curled up in the raggedy old blanket and using the soap left on the in-cell sink to wash herself in the morning. Jail was a preferable place when compared to the Midgar homeless shelter that she'd spent most of her youth in; no one stole from her when she was surrounded by concrete walls and a barred door. Her only crime was that she was homeless, illiterate, and wholly uneducated. It was a common crime, and she simply turned herself into the police each night for a free place to sleep away from the streets.

"Please, sir," said the girl, taking a flower from her basket and holding it out, "would you like to buy a flower? It's only one gil per bloom."

This morning, the clerk at the check-out desk had taken pity on her and pressed a small pouch of gil into her hands. She'd tried very hard to refuse it, but, of course, the clerk had feigned deafness until she had accepted the gift and agreed to leave Midgar for finer pastures. So she'd bought a ticket and taken a ferry across the sea.

Her possible customer turned his head and stared at her.

It was a modest little flower, she realized too late, and it didn't the man before her at all. He was too well-dressed and far too handsome to be interested in something so boring as a white pansy; indeed, he would have better suited some of the (slightly wilted but still sellable) roses. Besides, she noticed now that he had a couple of bikini-clad girls on his arms, their tanned, toned bodies shaking with suppressed giggles.

Hastily, she ducked her head. "I'm sorry."

But, when she looked down at her hand, she found that the flower was gone. Immediately, her head snapped back up, watching as the man turned the stem between his fingers, caressed the petals with his forefinger. The bikini-girls were just as surprised as she was when he spoke.

"You're not from around here."

She wondered with half a brain if he was going to pay for the flower or just molest it to death like that. "No, sir. I came here from Midgar."

His head tilted, silver hair falling lightly into his cat-like eyes. "I am from Midgar as well," he said after a moment, "but from above the pizza. From the sound of your accent, you're from below, and, from the smell of you, you've been a street rat most of your life. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir."

For some odd reason, he smiled. "Well," he said in a half-mocking tone, "aren't you a sight."

He tossed the flower back to her and then several fifty gil notes at her feet. She scrambled to pick them up, ignoring the giggling girls and the leaving footsteps of the man. Holding the damaged and abandoned flower in one hand and the notes in the other, she gasped, head once more snapping up to watch the man wave off the two girls at the inn door.

"Wait!" she cried, but it only came out as a small whisper. "Sir, I need to give you change…"

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

_28_

My Fair Lady

--

He could now be declared legally insane. As the clock face blinked past the seventy-second hour of his consciousness, Rufus pressed his head against the palm of his hand and reached out for his calculator again. Little green dots that occasionally had some semblance of shape danced on the edges of his vision. But he paid these oddities no heed, watching only the dance of numbers on the calculator's digital panel.

Across the room, the door opened and Tseng's familiar, measured footsteps entered. Rufus didn't looked up, simply staring at the numbers—all in the red—that were set out before him.

"Rufus, we need to talk."

No eye contact; Rufus reached out and picked up an uncapped pen, noting the results on a legal pad, his writing lopsided slightly in his effort to ignore the man in front of him. He would need to reduce funding in the private sector and increase responsibility of the currently puppet government in Midgar to correct these numbers. Either that or he would have to let people go, and that was not an option. Nor was his preferred method of killing people.

Tseng was now behind him, and Rufus could feel the heavy emotions rolling off the Turk. "I'm not going to let you ignore me this time," he said in what Rufus knew was Tseng's most dangerous tone. "Turn around, Rufus, or you will make me do something both of us will regret."

Still, though, the numbers didn't add up. There was an unnatural surplus of funds in the science department and the generator maintenance subgroup. There had to be a reason, had to be some sort of –

Rufus's mind froze as he felt Tseng's hands—hot and rough—rip through his shirt and coat as if stripping away rice paper to massage at the sensitive skin around Rufus's nipples, calloused fingertips causing the nubs of flesh to spring into alertness. A kiss—far from chaste and with a velvet hot tongue—on his neck just over the pulse; Rufus registered belated that he was moaning, legs already spreading in the office chair wantonly.

"Damn it, Rufus," his torturer growled, swinging the chair around so that he could work at the younger male's belt buckle. "You're such a fucking bastard."

Absurdly this comment served only to send a spasm of erotic pleasure right down south as Tseng snapped the buckle on the pants. White pants and underwear joined the ruined clothing tangled in the legs of the chair, and Rufus groaned at the feel of cool air on his exposed body. But, quickly, the groan turned into a gasp of shock as he was lifted from the chair to sit on the edge of his desk; the lamp clattered to the floor.

Tseng was fully clothed and had a very strange expression on his face as he stared down at his work. Rufus felt the heat rise to his face, realizing how ridiculously hard he was already from just a bit of rough foreplay. Tseng, however, was smiling.

"So, you are human after all, my messiah."

Starting from the base, Tseng ran his middle finger tip up Rufus's cock, and Rufus, for all his pride and past experience, could not suppress the whimper of need that began deep in his belly and added to the racing of his heart. Grinning, Tseng made lazy circles around the tip, chucking as Rufus shuddered and panted in response, the pert opening oozing precum in desperate droplets.

"Like that?" Tseng was unbuckling his own pants with his other hand, lazily unzipping the black fabric as Rufus's feverish eyes watched. "Of course you do."

Tseng's finger made the return journey down Rufus's cock and began to prod the opening behind his balls just as he tugged down his own underwear just enough to expose himself to Rufus. He was only half as hard as Rufus was at this point, the longer, more mature cock at half-mast.

"Mine…"

Tseng tweaked each nipple, leaning down to mouth each with a rumbling growl. Rufus whimpered with the pleasure and reached down, grasping his own hand around his cock to try to relieve the pressure there.

"You are mine…"

That was the last thing Rufus registered before he felt Tseng's fingers inside of him, deftly guessing at the location of the sweet spot that made Rufus cry out in abandon. What happened next was a blur of animalistic sounds and colours that weren't really there, culminating in Rufus screaming out Tseng's name and a feeling of absolute pleasure to be both empty and full at the same time.

There was an uneasy silence, and, absurdly, Rufus found himself counting numbers again in his mind.

"I love you, Rufus, and I'm not leaving any time soon because I want to be able to do that one day without loosing you at the first touch. So don't fucking push me away. I'll just push back."

--

Vincent… was so shit-faced it wasn't even funny.

He tottered awkwardly before leaning against the side of a closed souvenir vendor, throwing his head back as he took a deep drag from the bottle of cheap rum. He wasn't entirely sure why he'd decided it was a good idea to get so drunk and had come to the conclusion that the fact he'd forgotten was a great victory over whatever it was that he couldn't remember. Lifting the bottle with a swaying arm, he toasted the winking moon.

"Gawd bless all ye who wander!" he slurred out happily before lurching and staggering up the street and into the darkened inn.

He didn't notice the girl with the empty basket slip in just behind him.

--

It was a lot like picking up hot stones and turning them over to cook old, rotten mutton beneath leaves. The rubble—if it could be called that—was a twisted, unruly carcass, sparks and stench more than likely to waft up from an uncovered hole. Rude had been the first to cave and fetch a face mask from the now-fixed helicopter. In Reno's opinion, it made him look a bit like a big, bald housefly, but he'd quickly caved as well and scurried, gagging, to strap on the spare mask. His street rat pride was a bit stung, but better safe than sorry.

"Reno, look at this."

Obediently, the younger Turk turned and looked under the twisted metal that his partner had just kicked up. He shrieked, jumped two feet straight in the air, and shrieked hysterically again.

Good god, he was turning into a girl.

But the… thing… was throbbing. He wasn't sure if it was green or if that was merely a side effect of the protective lenses on the mask, but it was definitely alive. Edging closer as if expecting it to bite him any minute, he stared down at the… thing.

"Do you think Rufus is going to want us to bring this back or something?" Rude asked, sounding just as disgusted as Reno's stomach felt. "The orders did say to use that iron crate for anything alive that seemed suspicious."

Reno wasn't listening. He watched the… thing… throb rhythmically, most noticeably in a chest-cavity-like area with two raised, breast-like lumps. It looked, upon closer inspection, about humanoid even though the legs were squished like long, tumor-like bugs and one arm had been blasted into gooey smithereens. The face, mercifully, was still covered by the dented metal mask.

"Reno," Rude hissed, nudging him hard in the ribs and earning another marvelous shriek from his lover. "I'm hurt. I thought that sound was only for me."

Colour rose to the teen's cheeks but was unobserved beneath the mask. "Shuddap," he hissed back, wishing he could chew his fingers or smoke. "Yeah, I guessed we'd better take it back…"

"…I don't want to touch it."

Beneath the mask, Reno's mouth fell open. "I ain't touchin' it!"

"Well, I'm not!"

"I ain't neither!"

And hence began Operation "Move the Icky Green Thing Without Touching It".


	30. The Aeneid

He had paced the length of the room, tried smoking, and drunk some, but nothing had helped his agitation so far.

"Will you shut up?" Rufus ground out the green on the edges of his vision. "I can't think with all the noise you're making."

_If you would listen –_

Rufus threw the crystal flute clenched between his right thumb and middle finger across the room. It smashed brilliantly into the enforced window and fell with delicate clinks against the metal floor.

"Damn liars!"

At that moment, he didn't care if anyone came in and found him talking to nothing. He didn't care if Tseng was outside the door, and he'd be damned to care if the entire press of the world had installed bugs into the office. Cursing, he fisted the side of his desk; around him, the empty cognac bottle exploded and the light fixtures short circuited.

"I'm done listening to you!"

The laptop went next, the buzzing circuits within combusting in quick succession, metal twisting under pressure and heat.

"I would have been happy if I'd died the first time. I would have thanked you for ending my stupid life. But no! No, you send me back here and have me kill my mother, kill my father, and now I'm killing Tseng. Again. Again! You don't even pay me for all the shit you put me through!"

The desk and the floor around him smelt of burning chemicals, little bubbling pockets around the electrical sockets forming. Rufus's head pounded and the wind roared in his ears.

_You drove Tseng to that!_ Now the Lifestream was screaming, and, though the red around him, an almost corporeal manifestation of the green entity was forming. _You, by pushing him away like you do to the rest of the world; you have no one to blame but yourself, boy!_

"Fuck you!" he shouts back.

_You created this, Rufus. You opened this limit yourself. Those with limit breaks, those who live, those who are born to _us_—you are born, made, and thrive on the instinct to survive._

"All I ever wanted was to die…" Rufus moans, clutching his pounding head and fisting his hair like a madman. "Just die and never wake up to this horror show of a world again."

_We don't stop people from dying, Rufus. We only do what is _correct_. We make mistakes, but mistakes of the living are bound to the living. We are not living, and, although we guide the living, only those born to us can truly affect the live world. Yes, we puppet, but there is always a choice. Your conscious choice was this road. Death came for you, but you decided it was not your time._

"But why did you choose me?"

_We don't choose. You choose yourself the moment you're born. People like you, people who should have died at birth, who shouldn't have existed in the first place… you are the same as everyone else, invested with the same will to survive despite all odds. Don't delude yourself and say this is your fault. You choose your own path, your own destiny. There is no such thing as divine right. _

_This is your path. You chose it. And you _will_ live it._

The office was destroyed. Alarms were blaring and he was covered in scraps and cuts. He relished the pain.

"I'm your puppet."

A humourless chuckle. _No. You are our repair tool. You told us yourself when we found you that this was to be your choice._

Rufus grit his teeth and opened his eyes. The water from the sprinkler system overhead was raining down on him, slicking down his swept hair and mingling dust with green-glowing wounds. Around him, the air was silent; he was alone again. Security would find him standing with his arms crossed, quietly, meticulously, cleaning a handgun by the remains of his office window.

He turned to the men—three Turks and Tseng, all with shocked and concerned expressions—and smiled. He gave a soft incline of his head.

"I'm sorry, but there's been a bit of an accident. Nothing serious, but could I bother one of you to contact maintenance?"

Tseng stared at him while the other Turks bowed their way out to carry out the orders, well-trained not to question their boss. For a moment, Rufus met his lover's eyes, eyes so unsure, full of shame and regret.

"I don't lie," he said in a very quiet voice. "Not to people I love. Not to you."

And Tseng Chak-Wong smiled as water dripped down his face so no one could tell if he was crying or not.

--

**Turkish Delights**

--

_29_

The Aeneid

--

The broken Restore materia glowed gently beneath the halogen lights, the waves coursing out of it like an atomic bomb rippling across the mass of living and dead things around them. A human hand still clutched the shards of the stone, allowing it to drain the last of his life energy with its power.

In the middle of it all, a stocky-framed four-year-old boy in a large nightshirt sat bawling, tears streaking down his face in great torrents and dripping onto the wrapped infant in his arms. Next to him, a terribly pretty little boy with silver hair, slightly younger than the crying boy, sat with his legs huddled up against his thin, fragile frame, his eyes blank as ice. The infant's eyes were open and alert, cat-like slits peering up at the destroyed ceiling with a strange measure of understanding.

"Yazoo," the crying boy started in a thick, hiccupping voice, "I'm scared."

Yazoo shot his older brother a glare. "Shut up, Loz," he hissed in a soft voice, almost gentle if not for the harsh hiss to his tone. "I'm trying to think."

He made to stand up, but Loz grabbed onto his arm in a vice grip. "Don't! Hojo-san said to wait for Reeve-san! Reeve-san will fix everything."

They were not normal children. Yazoo grit his teeth against the extreme pain of Loz's grasp, could feel the tiny bones in his arm already bruising under the pressure. It had been projected through tests that Loz would always be the strongest but the stupidest; Yazoo the most intelligent but the weakest; and Kadaj the most connected yet disconnected. Only Yazoo was to know this; only Yazoo had understood enough as a fetus to understand it.

"Loz, that hurts. Please let go. I'm not going anywhere."

But, oh, how did he want to. This place… Oh, Jenova. Yazoo resisted the urge to bury his head in his hands and scream.

--

"We're stupid, you know that?"

Zack glared over at his newfound drinking partner who was currently not drinking but pretty damn stoned, blowing a pink bubblegum bubble between long drags from the smoking weed between his fingers.

"You know, _some_ people like to get smashed to not think about their problems," the SOLDIER First pointed out with a wavering finger. "That's normally the point. But you just keep –"

"– On about it. I know. That's the way I am." Reeve's bubblegum bubble popped and he shifted the wad to the side of his mouth so he could smoke. "But have you?"

A swig of cheap liquor; he didn't even know the brand. "Have I what?"

"Ever thought about leaving this. Turning in your sword or your badge or whatever and just leaving? I mean, you've got a family somewhere. You said so. Well, so do I and I could go home to them right now if I wanted to."

"Then why the hell don't you?"

Reeve blew out a heavy puff of scented smoke, his eyes dilated as he leaned leisurely back against the wall of the seedy little bar a couple blocks off the second Shinra employee housing complex—in one of the few of those places above the slums that still survived. Zack watched all three of Reeve with deathly intensity.

"'Cause, you know, I've got a job to do and I can't just leave it. I've got my reports and my projects and a promise to a friend. I abandoned my family once already. I would only end up doing it again. So, what about you?"

Zack didn't answer, but Reeve laughed around his new bubblegum bubble all the same.

--

_So what do you do now that everyone is dead?_

Yazoo shook his head, the sick feeling swirling around in his stomach subsiding momentarily only to return at full force. The green specks were still talking even though he knew—he knew, goddammit—it was not supposed to be possible.

He had left his brothers in the care of Reeve, who had taken them back to a small but nicely kept apartment, and had since slipped out to wander the streets for the first time. Yazoo hugged the small coat that Reeve had placed over his shoulders while leaving the lab around his body, the hood pulled up over his head and shadowing most of his face. The people rushed and jostled, ignoring the bit of black and white gamin weaving around their long legs and shoes.

Never before had he seen such lights, such sights. In fact, he'd never seen lights outside of the little blinking dots on machines and the fluorescent glare of the lab. Yazoo stopped, a little off from the main sidewalk in the corner of a crossing, and simply stared up at the hazy neon and dancing signs. He closed his eyes, listening to the rush of voices, music, and industrial sounds, like a pilgrim at the entrance of the Holy Land.

He stopped running; the green was gone.

Yazoo found some coins in his pocket; obviously, Reeve had been expecting him to escape from the apartment. He stared at them for a moment, counting the etched numbers, before turning to look up at the small, street-side bakery next to him. A lady—a little pudgy with age and her graying hair falling into her eyes—was handing a small pastry to a business man.

"Five gil, please," she smiled as she took the money. "Have a nice day."

The Plexiglas case was filled with freshly baked treats, bright tarts, and warm sandwiches. Yazoo had no names for the fillings, recognizing them as food only from the educational books that he'd been shown in the lab. A hand rough from work touched his shoulder, and Yazoo looked up at the lady in surprise and a bit of fear.

"Do you need some help, little sir?" He nodded and her smile widened into something… something like Loz's, something genuine. "Well, why don't you try my favourite? It's this one, the strawberry cake slice there. It's sweet and light and the just the right size for a young man such as yourself."

He held out the seven gil the price in the window indicated and she took it gladly, handing him a plastic fork and paper plate with the cake slice on top. Yazoo pressed the fork slowly into first the fruit slice on the tip, then through the slight cream and the cake layer. It tasted nothing like anything he'd ever had—not like the shapeless nutrient soup, not at all like the medicines and potions. No, this "strawberry cake" tasted like the Promised Land, like the kind words he never received but were showered on Kadaj, like he was _human_.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said politely after swallowing his bite.

"Are you trying to get somewhere? I know this place like the back of my hand."

Yazoo thought. He knew nothing, really, of Midgar or the world outside of it. The lights and the sounds, the tastes and the sights—everything was a foreign piece of information, remote even after being showed photos and texts. But he had, once, head of places beyond the surface, beneath the reality, in the green.

"Actually," Yazoo said, guessing that this would probably sound absurd, "I am in need of a job and a place to stay. I am lost and have lost everything."

The woman's eyes widened and her mouth opened in shocked sympathy. For a moment, Yazoo balked at the reaction, frightened that his words had been too harsh and abnormal. But then she smiled a broken sort of smile.

"Come here, boy," she said gruffly. "You will work and live here. With me."

--

Aeris watched his body swaying to the beat of the music, the old jazz tune suiting his tall and regal frame. His companion—the dark haired man she'd followed in the other night—was at the bar, letting some young thing snuggle up on his lap, sharing a sweetened martini between them. But she only watched the silver-haired man, his glowing eyes turning from partner to partner, the seemingly unlimited amount of girls who he twirled for a dance before moving onto the next.

For a moment, their eyes met and the song ended. He beckoned to her even as he stooped to plant a chaste kiss upon his current girl's painted lips. She stood up from her bar stool and approached him slowly. He took her hand in his and began to move her to the new song's tempo.

He had the gall to give her a wink and wipe away the stain of the last girl's lipstick. "I like 'em natural," he whispered deep in his throat, leaning forward teasingly. "No chemical tastes, no, just a babe's sweet sugar, hm?"

His breath smelt of rum and coke, but the rum was not strong and his step was steady. She was beginning to feel the music, her steps no longer dragging so horrifically behind his lead.

"Why?" she asked. "Why are you and I… connected?"

She felt his nose in her hair, inhaling the sea salt from her afternoon swim and the lingering dregs of industrial chemicals that reached the water even this far from Midgar. He was really becoming too close for comfort, but she couldn't… wouldn't push him away.

"I know your scent…" His voice was husky, panting. "And I am drawn to you, street rat. Isn't that enough in this tropical paradise?"

His lips tasted much like his breath. It was neither of their first kiss, but, for some odd reason just like the one that had drew them together in the first place, it was unique. Chaste, yes, but somehow that kiss was more intimate than any either had experienced before.

"Yes…" she breathed, their lips brushing again, slowly, gently. "Yes, that is enough."

_And the nymph began her response to the shepherd._


End file.
